The Kind Deceivers
by Mothfinder General
Summary: There's something awfully strange about the rocks near Geosenge Town. The sequel to 'Seven Days in Lumiose City'. Warning for non-con.
1. Normal

Harjeet put a sheaf of papers in front of him. They were neatly colour-coordinated, labelled and bound. Her nails were immaculately painted too. Today was a good day; today she'd made the extra effort. Professor Sycamore touched her hand lightly, said, "Thank you, chéri," and watched Harjeet try to force a smile through the clouded gloom on her face.

Harjeet and Professor Sycamore had adjoining offices now; the two new research assistants shared the main office. It was better that way – Pierre and Bryony were both fresh, energetic and boundlessly enthusiastic about everything from the Mega Evolution master research project to the nursery where the young Pokémon were hatched. Professor Sycamore and Harjeet were passionate about their work, but neither of them could be called energetic or fresh anymore. They both went about their days with a new sadness that alienated them from their colleagues and bound them wordlessly to each other, in a miserable sort of friendship.

Harjeet's permanent sadness was easier to understand, of course. Her story was the great romance of the department. After almost a year of dancing around one another, breaking one another's hearts by flirting with other people, avoiding each other and having dramatic conversations in the labs late at night, Harjeet and Professor Sycamore's old research assistant Jean-Baptiste had finally given in and fallen into one another's arms. (Professor Sycamore had actually gone out to celebrate with some of the faculty, they'd been watching the drama unfolding for so long.) Two months after they'd succumbed to one another, Jean-Baptiste was offered an impossibly good post at a university in the Hoenn Region.

They'd gone into Professor Sycamore's office to discuss it, although Professor Sycamore felt like less of a guide and more of an audience.

"How can I help you, mes petits?" he'd asked.

"Tell her that I don't have to go," Jean-Baptiste had said, his fair face flushed red. "Tell her it doesn't matter to me if I stay here as an assistant."

"Tell him that I'm not the kind of girlfriend who would force him to give up an opportunity like that!" Harjeet had snapped. "Tell him I care enough for him that I want him to be happy."

"Erm," Professor Sycamore had said. They were looking at each other as they spoke, and only seemed to be addressing him accidentally.

"Tell her that I love her and being with her will make me happy!" Jean-Baptiste had said, his voice rising.

"Tell him that I love him and I want him to go out in the world and succeed and make me proud and forget me!" Harjeet had shouted. And just like that, they'd burst into tears and flung themselves into one another's arms.

In the end, Jean-Baptiste went.

That was three months ago. Professor Sycamore could still sometimes hear Harjeet crying behind the door that separated their offices.

Professor Sycamore's low moods, on the other hand, were the great mystery of the department. They weren't as tangible or obvious as Harjeet's angst; sometimes weeks would go by and he'd seem exactly as he always had, a bright, absentminded, charismatic young academic. Other times there would be a slowness to his movements, a distance in his eyes, a sadness in his smiles. Other times still, he just wouldn't come in. 'Working from home' was the excuse, but very little work seemed to get done on those days, and Professor Sycamore didn't have the heart to admit that on really bad days, all he did was lie under the covers cuddling Vyvy, his recently-evolved Braixen, while his even-tempered Fletchinder Beckett tried to push biscuits into his mouth every hour or so, to make sure he didn't die.

A few of his closer friends in the department, and his two closest friends outside of it, noticed that the rise of his glumness had started shortly after he was promoted to Professor, in the spring of last year. Now it was autumn, it had been a year and a half, and the new, slightly broken Professor Sycamore was the version everyone had come to accept, with some confusion.

Professor Sycamore allowed his friends to believe that the stress of the Professorship had temporarily sapped his spirit. He wasn't going to tell anyone the real reason.

As he leafed through the papers Harjeet had handed him – including an interesting report on the department's Eevee, which had apparently failed to react to a Thunder Stone and had stayed conspicuously Normal and unevolved, smiling fatly up at the graduate students who were working with it – his phone buzzed.

His heart dropped into his stomach then jumped back up again. _Maybe it's him_, he thought, and grabbed the phone.

'COME IMMEDIATELY to the Café Bon Chance it is VERY IMPORTANT they have a new PUMPKIN LATTE. Vive l'automne.'

It wasn't _him_. But it was Dr Benjamin Raine, Professor Sycamore's perpetually good-natured friend in the environmental biology department, and he would probably be a welcome distraction from the rising cloud of hopelessness.

He got up and knocked gently on Harjeet's door.

"Ma poulette," he said softly, "I'm going out for a coffee. I might just go straight home afterwards. Is everything okay?"

"Fine, thank you," said Harjeet, in the voice she used when she was in the middle of weeping quietly and wanted to be left alone.

"Alright, dear. Bon journée. See you tomorrow."

He walked into the main offices, where Bryony was standing in front of what looked like an exploded computer. Pierre was watching from his desk at the other end of the room, his grin uncertain.

"Bryony, my sweet," said Professor Sycamore, "what on earth are you doing?"

Bryony looked up and sniffed busily. She was a punky, gamine girl with brilliantly coloured hair and an air of comfortable confidence that Professor Sycamore was rather taken with.

"I'm hacking the hardware," she said matter-of-factly.

"Oh," said Professor Sycamore. "Oh, well, er, good? Carry on?"

She gave him a big smile. "Don't worry Professor. I know what I'm doing."

"Yeah, she didn't say that yesterday when she tried running the simulation exclusion algorithm through her zombie computer and it started sparking and we lost all the data we'd fed it," called Pierre from across the room.

"Shut it noob," she bit back cheerfully, "you don't know shit about my shit."

"Yes, er, 'noob'," said Professor Sycamore, bewildered. These sound like fighting words, he was thinking, why are they both looking so happy?

"Very sparks," said Pierre, more or less to himself, "much melting."

Bryony blew a raspberry and then seamlessly turned to the Professor. "Actually, Professor, I was hoping to talk to you about my work placement."

Professor Sycamore smiled and felt the sadness twist inside him. "Yes, of course. Perhaps we could have lunch tomorrow? I'll come and get you at 1. Knock on my door if I forget. In the meantime, mes enfants, I'm going out and I won't be coming back. Have a lovely day."

They waved him out.

Lumiose City in the early autumn was as beautiful as postcard. Orange and red leaves fell like scraps of paper from the leaning trees lining the streets. The light was kindly and diffuse, rendering everyone faintly sepia-toned. Professor Sycamore found the autumn a rather old-fashioned season; it was soft and eternal, keeping to its elemental traditions with the dignity of an old stag. Like so many other things in his life, Professor Sycamore found the beauty painfully bittersweet. Every time he saw a pretty sunset, or watched the leaves form mysterious spirals in the passing winds, he remembered anew who he was not watching them with.

His phone buzzed again and he pulled it out of his pocket. This time it was his friend Hua An. The text said, simply, 'dépêche-toi'. So he was at the Café Bon Chance too. That was cheering.

Hua An and Dr Raine had already found a table by the time he arrived. There was a third pumpkin latte on the table and his friends were deep in conversation. Dr Raine was pulling his, 'oh my goodness really?' face while Hua An was saying something seriously. Despite himself, Professor Sycamore's interest was piqued – Hua An was a very secretive individual, usually.

"Bonjour, bonjour," he said, pulling up a chair. "What is all this here, then? Why are you looking like you are plotting?"

"I've quit my job," said Hua An.

"Mon dieu! Fantastique!" Professor Sycamore exclaimed automatically. Then: "Or, putain? I am not quite sure…"

"I just mentioned this," said Dr Raine, drawing a happy face in the foam of his latte. "How long have we known you, Hua An?"

"Seven, eight years, I suppose?" said Hua An, his eyes twinkling.

"Why do we still not know what your job is?"

Hua An sighed, but was unable to hide his smile. "I've told you _so many_ times, Ben, you just _don't listen_, because my job is _very boring_, which is why I _quit_."

"Oh well, hooray then," said Professor Sycamore. "What's your new job?"

"It's in project management," said Hua An, then, "See?! Your faces are actually glazing over! That's so rude!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," murmured Professor Sycamore. "Please, do tell us what projects you'll be managing."

Hua An adjusted his lapels and pretended to dust off his cuff. "Well, I'll be organising the logistics and resources for a means-focused lobbying group-"

"You're actually pitching your voice at a more boring level," Dr Raine interrupted. "Can't you describe it with a bit more… vigour?"

"Couldn't you accompany it with mime?" asked Professor Sycamore hopefully. Hua An groaned and smacked his hand against his forehead.

They spent a pleasant hour chatting and joking at the Café Bon Chance, and in the intervening time, Professor Sycamore felt almost restored to himself. It was only when Hua An stood up, said briskly, "Friends, I have to go home, I need to go and get ready," and Dr Raine said teasingly, "Why, have you got a date?" that Professor Sycamore felt his heart sink. Another day had come to a close, another day passed without any word from _him_.

Dr Raine caught his eye. "Are you taking a taxi or are you walking, Gus?"

"I think I'll walk."

"I'll walk with you. Come on."

They stepped out into the ending day. There was still sunlight over the roofs towards the west but the eastern sky was already dark and some stars blinked shyly in the distance. Night was drawing in quicker and quicker everyday.

The two men took the roundabout route to Professor Sycamore's house, which would allow Dr Raine to turn off towards his own house.

"How is Katrinne?" asked Professor Sycamore.

Dr Raine sighed. "Not so great. We didn't manage it again this month. I think she's taking it quite personally, like it's her body's fault."

With a guilty start, Professor Sycamore remembered that Dr Raine and his wife had started to try for a baby in earnest.

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. I can't believe I so stupidly sat through that latte without asking once."

Dr Raine waved his words away. "Not at all, mon ami. Sometimes it's good just to spend a little time forgetting."

"Yes," said Professor Sycamore fervently. Dr Raine looked at him, an expression of cautious gentleness on his face.

"Et toi, Gus? How are you?"

Professor Sycamore fetched up a deep sigh. Their walk took them off a busy, pedestrianised road and into a residential area. There was a far-off sound of children's laughter.

Finally he said, "It is one of the better weeks, I think."

Dr Raine nodded. "That's good."

They walked to the turning that would take them their separate ways and Dr Raine pulled Professor Sycamore into a hug. They stood like that for a few seconds, then Dr Raine stepped back and said, "Alors, Gus, call me if anything comes up." Professor Sycamore nodded and walked on.

He remembered, like a montage, all the gentle, tactful ways that Dr Raine had dealt with this new, damaged version of his friend. It had been quite hard in the beginning. Dr Raine knew him better than anyone else in Lumoise City, and had reacted with a hurt puzzlement that was as sincere as Professor Sycamore's own pain.

"But I can see there's something wrong," he had said, after Professor Sycamore had protested one time too many (this was about a year ago, at the tail end of an awful summer of sadnesses). "Why must you persist in pretending to me that there is nothing wrong? You know I hate to see you like this."

He'd opened his mouth, hadn't been able to form words, shaken his head. Dr Raine had dragged his long pianist's fingers through his curls of dark blond hair.

"If you won't talk to me," he said, "would you talk to a professional?"

"What do you mean?" Professor Sycamore had asked, his throat dry.

It turned that Dr Raine thought he should visit the university's psychotherapy department. Professor Sycamore knew in advance this wouldn't help. He was unhappy for private reasons that he couldn't reveal; if he couldn't reveal them, he wasn't going to be able to talk them over. In truth, the idea of a psychotherapist raking through his mind and medicalising what felt like a holy, silent, secret martyrdom was almost more than he could bear (even though he knew this sort of thinking was making him worse). He'd gone for one session, come away with the flat diagnosis of 'depression' and refused to go back, despite Dr Raine's entreaties.

Hua An had been much more stoic about the whole thing. When Professor Sycamore, fascinated by the diagnosis, had admitted it to his friend, Hua An repeated blankly, "They say you have depression?"

"Yes."

"Which means you feel bad sometimes?"

Professor Sycamore had been about to open his mouth and explain, no, he didn't 'feel bad' sometimes, he felt like he was a marionette that was pulled in contradictory directions by emotions all of out proportion to the situation, that sometimes he felt like a marionette without strings and could barely summon the energy to move, like he'd been wiped all over with a grey dust, like it could be fine for days and days and suddenly everything would look pointless and dirty, but he saw the sympathy in Hua An's eyes and said, "I suppose."

"Do you still want to be friends?"

Professor Sycamore had blinked, startled. "Well, yes, of course I do."

"That's alright then. That's what matters," said Hua An, and had never mentioned it again. Although there had been that time back in the spring, when he'd seen _him_ at an exhibition in Downtown Lumiose, and _he'd_ barely greeted Professor Sycamore, hadn't spoken to him all evening, apparently intent on talking to the gorgeous woman he'd arrived with, another member of the Kalosian nobility. He kept on catching sight of them in odd corners, deep in conversation. She'd been stunning too, dressed in a blood-red dress with a sort of military insignia over the breast. Professor Sycamore had left early, making vague excuses about a sudden illness to his date (whom he never saw again), and had called Hua An up (Dr Raine being out of the city for the weekend with his wife). They'd gone to a late-opening café and Hua An didn't ask any questions, didn't say a thing, just bought Professor Sycamore a hot chocolate and held his hand for an hour, patting it occasionally.

Dr Raine, when he'd been told, hadn't been able to leave the diagnosis alone.

"What are you depressed about?" he'd asked, again and again.

Professor Sycamore sighed noisily. "I don't know, Ben. The colour of sunlight. How high the sky is. The sound of wings. Rain on cobblestones. Bloody everything."

"I didn't ask you to spout a sonnet," Dr Raine had snapped, "I asked you to _explain_ it to me. Is it the Professorship? Has something gone wrong?"

"Yes. No. Oh, I don't know." This conversation had taken place in Dr Raine's living room. They'd been having a drink on the sofa and Dr Raine was pacing up and down, pulling at his hair in frustration. "Oh, sit down, Ben. It's- I don't know. I think I've made all the wrong life decisions."

Dr Raine had stared at him. "Wrong life decisions? You're a hero in your field. You're one of the youngest professors in Kalos. You have women hanging off you. How have you made the wrong life decisions?"

Professor Sycamore had felt so wretched, unable to admit the truth to his best friend. "I, just, I think that, I sometimes wonder whether all the things I've wanted weren't actually the things I wanted."

Dr Raine had sat down heavily next to him. "And have you found what it is you actually want?"

Yes. "No."

"No?"

"I, I'm not the same man that I was, Ben. It's a shock to find that out, after more than three decades believing I was a certain sort of person. I feel cut off from myself. It's just that." That, he had thought, and knowing that the one thing I want is always going to be unattainable.

Dr Raine was an academic, and therefore he was first and foremost a problem-solver. "Well," he'd said, "what are we going to do about it?"

Professor Sycamore had snapped. "Arceus, Ben, _I don't know_. I can't 'do' anything about it, comprends? I can't wish it away, alright? It's not going to just vanish, and I'm sorry that I can't magic it better."

They'd sat in silence, listening to the answering silence in the street outside.

Eventually, Dr Raine said, "Then, how can I help you deal with it? How can I help you?"

Professor Sycamore had shrugged against the rising tears. "Just be there when I need you. Leave me alone when I need to be alone."

"But I'd always do that for you, Gus. You're my friend."

"Merci," Professor Sycamore had said very faintly, and then he'd put his head in his hands and started to cry. Dr Raine hadn't flinched, and sat rubbing Professor Sycamore's back until he'd exhausted himself crying. Later on, they drank so much that Professor Sycamore had dozed off on the sofa, coming round only momentarily to feel Dr Raine removing his shoes and tucking a blanket around him. I wish it was Ben I was obsessed with, thought Professor Sycamore muzzily, as he started to fall asleep again. Alright, so I'd be in the same situation with the unreciprocated desire but at least I have very real proof that Ben cares about me…

Remembering that now, at the front door to his apartment, Professor Sycamore felt the tears prickling anew and thought, no, for goodness sake, can I have a night off from the boo-hooing?

Vyvy the Braixen and Beckett the Fletchinder were both waiting up in the apartment when he got in. Sometimes he took them into work with him, sometimes he didn't. It always seemed that they decided whether they wanted to come in or not; at times Professor Sycamore suspected that they owned him, not the other way around. Beckett was balanced on the biscuit tin and wearing a face that clearly said, don't make me forcefeed you.

"Hello mes beaux," he said, leaning over a kitchen chair to stroke the Braixen's ears. "What shall we have for dinner? Do you think I want to eat quiche?"

Vyvy gave him a happy smile. Beckett's face said, anything you like, only I will forcefeed you if I have to.

He got their food out first, then tied an apron around his waist and set to work on his quiche, the Fletchinder's chiding eye half on him.

As he cooked, he replayed all the things that could have gone wrong three weeks ago that would explain why Lysandre hadn't been in touch with him.

Professor Sycamore's friendship with Lysandre du Feu was a deeply complicated one, and not just for the secret reason that made Professor Sycamore so abidingly unhappy. They were in a bothersome professional position as well: Professor Sycamore was the rising star of the École Normale Superieure's evolutionary biology lab and Lysandre was the head of the innovative commercial enterprise Fleur-de-Lis Labs. If they were nothing but colleagues in the same research circles, everything would be fine. There was even quite a good exchange of research and personnel these days – Bryony's paid work placement at Fleur-de-Lis was just one of many exchanges that, in the apparently unironic words of Lysandre, had 'mutually enriched the work cultures of both institutions'. But they were technically rivals, and worse still, they were technically friends, although on days like this Profesor Sycamore thought it was a very weak technicality.

They'd become friends in fits and starts. The first time Lysandre had visited the university labs had been nothing short of torture for Professor Sycamore. They'd only known one another for a week at the time and Lysandre had already caused Professor Sycamore's mind to supernova. He'd spent the whole visit feeling like his face was encased in a clay mask, it felt so heavy and cumbersome to keep smiling.

Harjeet and Jean-Baptiste were both still working in the labs then, and he'd kept one or the other with him at all times, desperately afraid that being alone with Lysandre would result in him revealing, through a wrong breath or a wrong action, that he kept thinking about taking one of the man's wide-spanning hands in both of his own and lifting the bruised knuckles to his mouth, to gently suck each one. Lysandre had been quite stiff and cold for the whole visit; perhaps he'd suspected that something was not right.

It had developed slowly from there. At first Lysandre was overtly formal and, in response, Professor Sycamore would act frivolously and foolishly, hoping that Lysandre would assume he was a sort of intellectual airhead and would overlook any strangeness in his behaviour as a ditzy idiosyncrasy. They rarely saw each other outside of work, and rarely discussed anything but work. That had been the bad summer, the one where Professor Sycamore had had grim fantasies of flagellation and mortification, the one where Dr Raine had finally intervened. It went on until last autumn, when Lysandre had appeared in the labs one cool evening, looking unusually wan (a disaster with his invention, the Holo Caster). He'd stood in the doorway of the office, a devastatingly handsome silhouette, and had asked Professor Sycamore if he wanted to get something to eat.

It was so simple a request, but at the time Professor Sycamore had had to hold on to the edge of his desk to keep from dropping to his knees. He'd spent the entire evening on autopilot – he couldn't remember a single detail from it, other than his desperation to keep his desire hidden and the burning memory of Lysandre's blue eyes.

After that, Lysandre would occasionally drop by the labs during the day. Not frequently, not often, but enough to make Professor Sycamore feel as if he was more than just a useful tool to the man. He'd tried dropping into the Café Lysandre as well, in response, but there was no telling when Lysandre would be there, so he soon gave that up.

The summer that had just past had been a high point, and it had all started because some trendy young people had set up an outdoor cinema on the roof of an abandoned block of flats. The cinema would be showing classic films and 'modern aesthetic masterpieces', which Professor Sycamore thought was a bizarre choice of wording. Somehow, he'd found the courage to persuade Lysandre to come to a viewing.

"It is a preposterous, hipster idea," Lysandre had said wearily. "The city is full of perfectly good cinemas, some of them remarkable pieces of vernacular architecture that are crumbling through neglect and underuse, and you want me to go and sit on the roof of a condemned building and watch old films?"

"Oh, mon ami, don't you want to feel cool and down with the kids for once in your life?" Professor Sycamore had argued.

They hadn't actually managed to watch the film. It turned out that there were a limited number of chairs available, which you had to arrive quite early to get, and everyone else just sat on the floor. The minute Professor Sycamore saw the seating arrangements, he thought, 'oh no'.

"I am _not_ sitting on the floor," Lysandre had said icily.

"No, of course not. Just imagine what a crime that would be against your lovely trousers."

"This was a very harebrained idea of yours, Professor."

"Oh, my goodness me, do I ever have any other?"

"Let's go and have a drink." This invitation took Professor Sycamore by surprise. Of course, in their long professional relationship, he and Lysandre had both been together, in a room, in the presence of alcohol, but these were usually official functions. They'd never gone someone alone for the sole purpose of (it must be said) getting drunk.

They'd gone to a ludicrously expensive, but very nicely decorated, cocktail bar, where Lysandre had opened a tab and ordered cocktails for the Professor without asking what he wanted. This small act of arrogance had caused thrills to run up and down Professor Sycamore's body; it was exactly the sort of behaviour he imagined for Lysandre in his feverish nocturnal fantasies.

He'd been so frightened and excited that he'd drunk rather more than he usually would, and ended up badly tipsy and struggling to hide his desire. He kept bumping his knees against Lysandre's accidentally-on-purpose, laying his hands emphatically on Lysandre's arms when he was making a point, and saying things like, "Your hair is so enormous, do you use spray?" and "I've always wondered where you get your suits tailored, you have the neatest pair of shoulders I've ever beheld," things that said, _I have been looking at your body and I have thought about your body._ Lysandre had watched him coldly and suffered the physical contact, although each time Professor Sycamore had touched him, he'd appeared to freeze, as if Professor Sycamore's touch was a gigantic stinging insect whose interest he did not want to attract.

The next week, Professor Sycamore had tried again.

"We'll arrive early this time," he'd promised, "and we'll get seats. Besides, the film is a classic. It's _The Sweetheart_, don't tell me you don't want to see _The Sweetheart_ by the light of the setting sun?"

"Preposterous," Lysandre had repeated, but had gone along anyway.

The film was a blazing success. It stared the Kalos Champion Diantha in one of her earliest roles, as a wide-eyed young girl escaping from her small town for a life of adventure and danger. Professor Sycamore had seen it before and so he was able to sneak glances at Lysandre throughout the film. Lysandre had watched the giant, billowing screen transfixed, a touching expression of wonder on his face. At the end, he'd stood up and given a standing ovation during the credits.

"You don't have to applaud her, she can't hear you," Professor Sycamore had said, delighted but rather jealous.

"I had to applaud," Lysandre had replied. "That was wonderful."

"You do get rather passionate about some things, don't you?" Professor Sycamore had said, as they made their way downstairs. I wish you'd be passionate about me, he'd thought, unstoppably, or at least passionate about holding me down and just ruining me.

"Beautiful things, yes," Lysandre had said, and he'd been in a genial mood for the rest of the evening.

They'd made a habit of going to the outdoor cinema once a week after that, even though Lysandre would sometimes get irritated and walk out of films if he thought they weren't up to par. And more than that, they'd started meeting for drinks, for cups of coffee, for the occasional lunch, alone together. It had been a glorious summer. The miserable desire that plagued Professor Sycamore never relented, but the pleasure of being near Lysandre was almost enough to make the lust-pangs worth it.

And then, three weeks ago, a perfectly normal lunch. A perfectly normal chat about Mega Evos, the city council's plan to build a new tower, the best food to eat in the cooling weather, the dialect spoken in Professor Sycamore's home town in South Kalos. ("Say something." "I didn't really grow up speaking it, I'd have to ask my papa." "Try and say something, and I'll say something in court Kalosian." "Oooh, you speak court Kalosian?!") It had been briefly interrupted by a phone call from Professor Sycamore's sort-of girlfriend Marie, but was essentially no different to any of the happy, strictly platonic hours they'd shared together over the summer. And yet, since that day – nothing. Not a peep. Not even a formal email. Nothing.

While Professor Sycamore was eating his successful quiche, his phone started to ring. He spat out his half-chewed mouthful and fumbled for it, nearly dropping it before he'd managed to press 'answer'.

"Âllo?" he spluttered.

"Did I catch you eating, Gus?" said Marie's low, flirtatious voice.

"Oh, ma belle, I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting you to call," murmured Professor Sycamore, fighting the swell of disappointment in his chest.

"I wasn't expecting to either, but we've managed to wrap up the editing early."

Marie was the ideal girlfriend for a man in Professor Sycamore's complex situation. She was an assistant producer for a television company that specialised in war reportage and ground-breaking journalism, and often did not have time to see the Professor more than twice a week. She was a small woman with large breasts, a wicked black bob and scarring across one eye (in windy weather the scars would be extra-sensitive and she sometimes wore an eyepatch, which, once upon a time, Professor Sycamore would have found unbearably sexy). She had absolutely no interest in his work; he got the impression that she thought training Pokémon for competitive battling was rather juvenile, since she spent half of the year in actual war zones. She was barely aware of Fleur-de-Lis, Mega Evolution made her yawn and the idea of a committed relationship made her uneasy. Professor Sycamore found her incredibly restful company.

"I was wondering, since I have a bit of time off, whether you'd like me to come over? And you can help me… unwind."

Professor Sycamore managed to muster a smile. "That's does sound nice. Come over now. I can hardly taste this quiche anyway."

Marie laughed her soft, dark laugh. "À plus, then, my lover." A click let him know she'd hung up. He dropped the phone onto the table and sighed.

He'd be in a better mood once she actually arrived, but even so, the spark had gone out of him. He had no idea what she saw in him.

But it was still better than sitting alone, night after night, chasing the phantoms of his daydreams through the passages of his mind, curled under the covers around the hard kernel of his longing.


	2. Electric

The next day, Professor Sycamore sat opposite Bryony in the university café, having lunch. He listened to her talking enthusiastically about the work placement, propping his chin up with one hand.

"It's just such an exciting opportunity," she was saying, gesticulating with her fork for emphasis. "It's half the reason I moved to Lumiose City for my post-doc. They've published some _really_ thrilling research about Water-Type adaptation in polluted waters, really disturbing stuff, I'm surprised it's not getting more attention-"

"Mm," said Professor Sycamore. He was calculating the likelihood of Lysandre having worked on the research, and wondering if he could work it into a fantasy involving Lysandre swimming, or walking out from the spray of the waves like a young god manifesting before a crowd of worshippers.

"Ah, Professor," said a voice behind him. "I've been looking for you."

Even if Professor Sycamore hadn't memorised the low, cool timbres of that voice, he would have been able to tell who it was by the expression on Bryony's face: shock, replaced with slowly dawning delight.

"The young man at your offices mentioned that you'd gone out to lunch," said Lysandre, sitting down between them. "I hope I am not interrupting. I wanted to speak to you."

Professor Sycamore didn't look him in the face, not yet. There was only so much of Lysandre that he could handle at a time, especially after a three week break, and the thought of Lysandre seeking him out was almost too much happiness to bear. His limbs felt shivery and light.

"Mon ami, your timing is flawless as always," he said instead, his eyes on Bryony's face. "This is Bryony, she's going to be starting a work placement at your labs next week. Bryony, ma chérie, as you may have already deduced, this is Lysandre du Feu of the Fleur-de-Lis Labs. He's going to be your boss for the next six months."

He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Lysandre turning his face towards Bryony, and wondered how Bryony could face that proud blue stare without feeling faint. "Bryony Rose?" Lysandre asked.

"Yes, that's me," said Bryony. She was brightening up, her face alert and pretty. "I'm looking forward to working with you, Seigneur."

"'Lysandre' is fine," said Lysandre calmly. "I understand you're working on the Mega Evolution theory with Professor Sycamore here?"

"She's doing wonders and also terrifying the IT department," said Professor Sycamore. He still couldn't quite look at Lysandre, but Bryony caught his eye and he winked.

"Excellent," said Lysandre, ignoring this. "Of course we are always looking for more researchers interested in Mega Evolution, but if I am thinking of the right person, I believe we gave you the placement because we were so impressed by your thesis on mineral mining in the Nord Pas."

"Oui! That was one of mine!" said Bryony. She tucked her legs under herself and knelt up in her chair, in a gesture of touching girlishness. "I'm glad you liked it – my thesis adviser tried to block me from publishing it."

"A fool's act, to protect fools," Lysandre replied. He turned his head to Professor Sycamore now, and Professor Sycamore finally looked round to see the archangel of his nightmares, the tormentor of his fragile heart, the man whose name was the first thing on his lips every morning, mouthed like a covert psalm. You again, he thought. How are you going to destroy me today?

"You've read Mademoiselle Rose's thesis, Professor?"

"Why, yes," said Professor Sycamore mildly, "I pushed her post-doctoral application through the department. Remarkable stuff."

"Indeed," said Lysandre, and turned back to Bryony. They started to energetically discuss the circumstances surrounding the thesis publication. Professor Sycamore listened with half an ear, staring at Lysandre and taking in his face and body anew, starved as he'd been for three long weeks of the man's presence.

Bryony's thesis had been rather exceptional. It investigated the mineral mining disaster in the Nord Pas, which had resulted in the deaths of dozens of humans and Pokémon and caused the entire village of Medon to vanish into a sinkhole. The mining corporation, controlled by greedy shareholders, had mined the land almost hollow, which was bizarre enough, but what was more bizarre was the help they'd had from their Pokémon – Golems, Onixes, Steelixes, Dugtrios, Rhyhorns all native to the area, many of them caught in the mines or the nearby caves. The Pokémon, despite the fact they were working on their own habitat, hadn't stopped the humans, hadn't refused to work when they got to the point of no return; some had even, against all reason, died in the mine-shaft collapse. The tragedy was so shocking that there had been something of a taboo around investigating the circumstances that led up to the disaster, which was presumably why Bryony's supervisor had tried to suppress the thesis.

Professor Sycamore remembered now (too late) that Bryony was from the Nord Pas, that she had lost a brother in the disaster, that her thesis was dedicated to him.

Fortunately this didn't come up in the conversation, which had moved on to a more general discussion about the use of Pokémon and the destruction of natural habitats. Professor Sycamore noticed that two bright spots of pink had appeared on each of Lysandre's cheekbones. Poor man, he thought affectionately, he really cannot abide people making a mess of his nice clean country.

"Oh, merde," Bryony exclaimed suddenly. She'd been waving her arms about to make a point and had caught sight of her wrist watch as went past her face. "Oh merde, I have an appointment in the labs five minutes ago. Professor, Lysandre, I'm so sorry, I have to dash…"

"Not at all, Bryony, I hope it's been useful," said Professor Sycamore, who had managed to inject about three sentences worth of guidance into Bryony's burbling stream of consciousness over lunch.

"I look forward to seeing you next week, Mademoiselle Rose," said Lysandre gravely.

"Bryony is fine," she said with a smile, and sped off. They watched her go, and then they watched the autumn trees through the window.

"Where have you been in all this time?" Professor Sycamore said, to break the silence. He'd meant it to come out jovial and bantering but his voice cracked, making the question sound oddly intimate.

Lysandre sighed, or perhaps he just took a deeper breath than usual. "I've been busy, Professor, as I imagine you have too. I've come across some interesting data and I've a proposition to put to you."

"Oh?" said Professor Sycamore, trying to keep his voice as level as possible. "Have you made a breakthrough with the Mega Evolution theorem?"

"Something far more important than that." Unusually, Lysandre seemed agitated; a bystander would not be able to tell, but Professor Sycamore felt he was a scholar of Lysandre's body, and there was a telltale twitch to his fingers and a tightening around his eyes.

Lysandre rapped his knuckles thoughtfully against the table then said, "Is there anything edible in this café?"

Professor Sycamore thought about Lysandre's exacting tastes. "Try a black coffee and a quiche lorraine. You probably won't spit it straight back out. Here, let me…" He caught the eye of a floating student waiter and murmured the order. Lysandre remained unspeaking and Professor Sycamore didn't think he could bear an awkward lunch – it felt too much like their friendship had been set back and he would have to return to small-talk and work-talk and distance and coldness and doing awful painful things to himself when he masturbated, crying himself to sleep afterwards. So, to keep the conversation moving, he said,

"I'm glad you like Bryony."

"Xerosic found her," said Lysandre, looking round. "I rarely have time to look through the applications myself these days."

Professor Sycamore vaguely remembered Lysandre's senior scientist as a camp, well-dressed, portly man with the most insane haircut he'd ever seen. They'd met once, at Fleur-de-Lis. Professor Sycamore had been given the impression of a brain the size of a planet barely contained in one human sized head. He had a slightly foreign accent and the manner of a man who drank tea with one finger sticking out and crushed the skulls of junior researchers.

"I have to ask, mon ami," he said. "How did you find Xerosic?"

Lysandre actually smiled slightly at this. "Oh, I met him when I was living abroad. There was a conference on cross-Type breeding at my alma mater-"

"Which was where, exactly?" Professor Sycamore couldn't stop himself. Feed me another scrap about yourself, Lysandre, he thought. Reward me for keeping myself calm and not taking your hand and putting it under my shirt so that you can feel my heartbeat and know how much I've spent the last three weeks missing you.

The food arrived before Lysandre could answer and he looked with evident dismay at the scrappy little quiche lorraine on the chipped plate, the coffee in a big clumsy mug.

"It tastes nicer than it looks," Professor Sycamore promised, and when he'd watched Lysandre fastidiously cut a corner and put it in his mouth (oh the hopeless sensuality of it all), he said again, "Where did you study?"

"Taurosbridge University. The Ingrando Region," said Lysandre. "Xerosic's an Ingrander."

He paused to swallow and cut another piece of quiche. Professor Sycamore, seeing that he was not going to volunteer any more information, prompted, "Et plus?"

Lysandre smiled faintly again, his eyes faraway. "We met when he was presenting at the conference as part of a panel. His paper was followed by another Ingrand academic who based his theory on contradicting everything Xerosic said. I was in the audience at the time, and I just watched Xerosic. He seemed to become calmer and calmer with every passing sentence."

He took a sip of coffee and Professor Sycamore watched his throat move. "Professor, this coffee is appalling."

"Stop trying to distract me and finish telling me your thrilling story."

"Hm." Lysandre regarded him and Professor Sycamore put his head on one side. "Do you know Taurosbridge well, Professor?"

"A very old university," said Professor Sycamore. "Lots of men in tweed smoking pipes. Bicycles. Zubats in lecture hall rafters. Students punting along weed-choked rivers to classes. Bizarre and ridiculous traditions upheld by the Ingrand because they can't throw anything away."

Lysandre chuckled. "C'est vrai, I see you are familiar. This conference was taking place in the Great Hall – there are many Great Halls in Taurosbridge, the whole university is a series of interconnecting Great Halls. This one was decorated like an armoury; there were a pair of axes mounted behind the panel table, so they looked like a meeting of warlords. When Xerosic's rival – I do not even remember his name, his ideas were so laughable – had finished talking, all eyes were on Xerosic. Everyone wondered what he would do. Would he be angry, or would he sneer? Perhaps, nom de dieu, he would be genuinely upset."

Lysandre had placed his elbows on the table and leaned forwards, quite taken with the telling of his tale. He was a charismatic speaker when he wanted to be, Professor Sycamore realised. The effect was electric, like switching on a light.

"Xerosic stood up. He looked as relaxed as ever, but we thought he might be about to walk out. Instead he walked to the axes, took one down, hefted it with such consideration, and _boum!_ Into the table!" He sat back as Professor Sycamore burst out laughing. "And only then did he walk out."

"Mon dieu, and what did you do?" said Professor Sycamore, choking.

"I thought to myself, 'I am going to hire that man.'"

Professor Sycamore threw his head back and laughed again. "Alors, such a decision to make! How old were you?"

"Twenty-five. I'd only just set up Fleur-de-Lis. I knew he was perfect."

"Twenty-five! At twenty-five I was getting filthy doing fieldwork and living in an attic in Downtown Lumiose. How the other half live! But tell me, why was he perfect for Fleur-de-Lis? Because he was crazy?"

"Non, professor, because he had style. I already knew he was an exceptionally intelligent man. But to cut short a pointless argument with an axe? This was stylish."

Lysandre leaned back and pushed his half-eaten quiche away. Just as suddenly as his sparkling good mood had overcome him, it had departed, leaving the marble-cold carving of a man in its wake. Professor Sycamore peered at him anxiously through his fringe and wondered how he could retake the conversation.

"I cannot believe I have known you for over a year and I did not know that you studied in Ingrando," he said carefully.

Lysandre shrugged with diffident elegance. "Four years at Taurosbridge University, another three living in Ingrando. I only came back to Kalos to set up Fleur-de-Lis."

"You must have been very happy," said Professor Sycamore, not quite able to keep the jealousy out of his voice. He was already conjuring some haughty, blonde Ingrand girlfriend with a Rapidash and a hereditary dagger, flashing her eyes at Lysandre across a lecture hall filled with axes.

Lysandre's face clouded momentarily. "I was… ill… for some of the time I was there."

"Ill?" repeated Professor Sycamore, but Lysandre had entirely closed down.

They sat in silence again, Lysandre's eyes dull and flinty, his face blank. Professor Sycamore had latched onto the phrase 'I was ill', _j'étais malade_, and his mind was already spinning out of control. It was so vague and so seductively dark a sentence. Professor Sycamore imagined a younger Lysandre in the grips of a fever, his shock of red hair wild, his broad chest heaving, gasping with relief as a cool cloth was applied to his forehead…

"As I was saying, Professor," said Lysandre, with some effort, as if speaking from lips that were turning to stone, "I have a proposition for you."

"Oh yes, do tell me, I'm so curious," wittered the Professor automatically, while in his imagination he was washing Lysandre's hot limbs with the devotion of a worshipper, sliding the wet cloth up his thigh, listening to Lysandre's moans of anticipation as the cloth crept higher…

"Fleur-de-Lis have been investigating the rock formations by Geosenge Town – we thought they might have properties that would help us with the Mega Evolution theorem."

"Ah?" Even through the rising haze of desire, Professor Sycamore perked up at the mention of Mega Evolution. He sat up in his chair, crossing his arms over his lap to hide a hardening erection.

Lysandre paused. "I hope I do not need to underline the extreme secrecy of this matter, Professor."

"Bien sûr," said Professor Sycamore breezily. He was thinking, actually, Lysandre in the throes of fever would be impetuous, fervent. He'd forget his own strength, when I came to sit beside him he'd pull me down towards him, twisting my body in his arms. The fever would make him frantic, he'd bite my lips and neck and leave little hot rose-coloured marks where he'd bitten me…

"The fact is… we think there's something extraordinary there. And we think it's alive." He paused. "And we want to catch it."

Professor Sycamore forced himself to concentrate, wrenching his mind away from the mental image of Lysandre's burning, fever-touched fingers digging into his back, leaving bruises. "Wouldn't that be… rather dangerous?" he managed.

"Yes."

"Ah." Professor Sycamore ran his hand through his hair uneasily, trying to will his erection away. "And what does this have to do with me? Not that I am not very flattered and interested and so on, of course," he added hurriedly.

"Morphic resonation testing has suggested that the creature in question, whatever it is, is some kind of Pokémon, or proto-Pokémon," said Lysandre. He was speaking quietly now, and Professor Sycamore had to lean forwards to hear. "You are a Pokémon expert, Professor. You should be part of the team that captures it."

"Geosenge," murmured Professor Sycamore, "Geosenge… Isn't that the town where some ancient king was supposed to have buried an apocalypse machine?"

Lysandre's eyes glinted. "Yes."

"You know, mon ami, legends don't just work themselves into existence by sheer force of will… Usually, they are the garbled words of our ancestors telling us to leave things well alone." He rubbed his chin and sighed. "If there's something lying dormant there, is it really a good idea to wake it up?"

"Professor," said Lysandre in a low voice, "just tell me yes or no." He was leaning in so close that, if the Professor dared, it would only take a few more inches for him to reach the crescent moon of Lysandre's cheekbone and run his tongue along it. The temptation was so strong that he jerked backwards. Lysandre watched him, ice in his expression.

Professor Sycamore panicked. He wanted to jump to his feet and shout, yes, yes, of course, Lysandre, of course I want to work with you, but do you have any idea how impossible that would be for me? It would be like standing in a stream that always drained away whenever I leant down to drink. I'd be thirsty and the sight of the water would turn my thirst into an anguish. Eventually I'd have no choice but to drown myself, and I suppose by drown myself I mean accidentally reveal myself to you and be forced to leave Lumiose City, maybe even Kalos, and I just can't do that, Lysandre, I can't, you've ruined my life enough already, please, at least give me the shell of myself to inhabit and don't let me drive myself to madness.

"I'm fairly sure it's in contravention of my contract with the École Normale Superieure," he said weakly. "We are supposed to remain autonomous…"

"Yes or no," Lysandre repeated.

"I don't know, Lysandre," said Professor Sycamore, twisting his fingers through his hair. "Couldn't you give me time to think? The consequences, I don't think you've thought them through… I'd have to give up my job, of course, it would seriously damage Fleur-de-Lis's relationship with the university, and there's the whole Possible Apocalypse thing, dear goodness…"

Lysandre stood up abruptly. "I won't beg you, Professor," he said, and there was a flash of something over his face, some dark, angry emotion that Professor Sycamore only caught a glimpse of. "I'll give you a week to think it over. No more."

"I quite understand," said Professor Sycamore, startled by the sudden drama of the moment. "Please, Lysandre, won't you sit down? It's just all rather sudden…"

"No, I've already wasted more time here than I intended," said Lysandre, and Professor Sycamore winced at his callousness. "Remember what I've said, Professor." And with that, he turned and swept out.

After he'd gone, Professor Sycamore sat and waited for the trembling to stop. He felt like he was going to weep, and also like he was going to pick up the coffee cup and throw it at the door and shout, "Salaud! I'm doing this to protect us! Do you think I want to disgust you?" Another part of him was fighting the urge to go racing after Lysandre and to throw himself at his feet in the dust, to cry, "I surrender! Kick me if you have to but I can't bear to hide it anymore." Yet another was thinking, we were just having a nice lunch, what was that all about, why does he have to turn everything into a blood-soaked tragedy, mon dieu.

Some still-rational voice at the back of his brain was still functioning through the turmoil though. Uncovering a Pokémon apocalypse machine, eh, it said. I should probably go and talk to Professor Axe about that.


	3. Psychic

There were scars running up and down Lysandre's calves, but since Lysandre would rather be ritually disembowelled than seen wearing shorts outside of a sporting situation, no one ever saw them so no one ever commented on them.

He could feel them beneath the cloth of his trousers, each one a hot, dark thread bound around his leg, tightening when he moved. Sitting at the head of the table in the meeting, he crossed one leg over the other and the slow-burning pain blossomed languidly, concentrating his mind with the keenness of a drug.

There were about ten other people in the meeting, including his head scientist Xerosic and his recently-promoted head engineer Amina. Among the faces, he recognised the chief archivist, who had spent the past six months researching ancient Kalosian history; a deputy journals editor who had broken into the top echelon of Fleur-de-Lis using a degree in geology, a lot of charm and a well-timed paper on the rocks around Geosenge Town; and the new resources executive, who had been employed for three days and reported directly to Lysandre.

He couldn't help noticing that everyone seemed to be wearing at least one item of red.

He hadn't slept well. He'd woken up the bad way again. In his jaded, insomniac state, his vision faintly blurred, the repeated red motifs bloomed in the room like bloody roses, echoing the measured, blossoming pains of his scars.

"If there's something there," Xerosic was saying, "then the first thing we need to do is calculate the holding power necessary in a Pokéball to capture it. Can't you provide us with the data for that?"

"I'm not sure there _is_ a Pokémon there," the archivist was saying. What was his name? Alfonse? Alfred? "The records are somewhat confused… I think the 'Pokémon' element might meant to be understood metaphorically, with the twinned elements of Life and Death representing the wielder's ability to create good or evil-"

"You mean, all we have to go on is _poetry_?" spat Xerosic, for whom the realm of soft facts was an anathema.

"There are some old scrolls, but they're mainly about La Guerre des Frères," said the archivist wearily. "I need more time."

"My vote's in favour of a Pokémon being there," said the ambitious geologist. "It might be dead or it might be dormant but there's something there. If you've read my report," here she snapped her gum, looked sharply around the table, "you'll see that the chemical make-up of the hillocks, the drumlins, even the topsoil in that area are unexplainable except through geobiological intervention. Some kind of flesh, or meta-flesh, has leached into the landscape."

"But the Doomsday Machine," began the archivist, before Xerosic leaned across the table and snarled,

"I'd sooner believe in legendary Pokémon than I would in fantastical machinery."

With that, the meeting collapsed into chaos. There were only two opinions, really, but everyone wanted to have a different way of saying it, and loudly. Xerosic had a talent for stirring up debate, Lysandre noticed. It must have been growing up in Ingrando – a mad, isolationist island state with delusions of grandeur but no real power, which left its inhabitants with a contradictory sense of self. No wonder Xerosic was so eccentric.

Only two people remained silent. One the new resources executive. The other was Amina, who was drinking her lemongrass-and-honey tea with the placid expression of a woman who couldn't care less about management meetings and wanting to go back to tinkering with the Holo Caster. In these meetings, she often spent the whole thing doodling redesigns of primary mechanisms on her copy of the minutes and absentmindedly running her fingers over her lips (he'd seen the archivist staring at her).

Lysandre liked looking at her too; he found her presence consoling. Besides, she was, he knew, desperately and hopelessly infatuated with him. On her bad days, he could feel her unhappy devotion settling around them both like a shawl. He didn't mind it. He felt curiously like her ally because they were both sunk at the bottom of the same dark sea. He understood the sting of thwarted desire, made worse by constant exposure to the desired one, like a wound rubbed raw.

Once, when they were working late at night on the Holo Caster, he'd seen her watching him with a strange, soft expression that he found both touching and disturbing. Is that what I look like? he'd wondered, taking Amina's chin between a finger and thumb and gazing down at her. When I'm looking at him, when he's turned away from me, is this the expression that I can't control? He'd turned Amina's head this way and that, trying to memorise the planes of her face – but then he'd noticed the terrible enchantment in her eyes and he'd let her go.

"Have you considered," he said to the meeting now, raising his voice above the hubbub,"that both might be true? That there might be a Pokémon, and there might be a machine?"

This was greeted by an astonished silence. Lysandre thought, what the hell am I paying these people for.

"If that's the case, Lysandre," said Xerosic, "which one do you want?"

"I want it all."

There was a general straightening of backs around the table, a pulling back of shoulders and a popping of collars. These people liked to be given a purpose.

He steepled his fingers and surveyed the room. "I don't want vague promises of a legendary machine," he added. "I want facts. We need proper access to Geosenge Town. We may have to establish a dig site there, and a front project."

"We don't need a front," said the geologist smartly. "As I said, the properties of the rocks around there are fascinating. We might as well see if we can tie it in to the Mega Evolution project."

Lysandre could see Xerosic nodding, _yes good_.

"The access will be arranged," said the new resources manager smoothly. Everyone looked at him, surprised. He shrugged. "Well? That's what you hired me for, isn't it?"

"Exactement." Lysandre gave him the briefest of smiles and then looked around the table. "Thank you, everyone. Meeting dismissed."

As he stood up, the scars on his legs burned in protest. His sight went blank briefly, like a light switching off in his skull. When it came back on – when he could see again – he found that he'd moved across the room already, was partway through saying something to Amina. Everything is fine, he said sternly to himself, but something in his head was laughing derisively.

It's just insomnia, he thought. I'll take sleeping pills tonight.

"And how is Théo?" Amina was asking. She looked as if she wanted to just run for it, but also like she wanted an excuse to keep talking to Lysandre, and was awkwardly standing with one foot already out of the door, her body twisted towards him.

"He's fine," said Lysandre. "He is responding very well to the training. He'd make a fine battle Pokémon, if I ever wanted such a thing." In fact Lysandre Litleo had taken to battle training with a kittenish relish and was far more dangerous than his relatively small size suggested. He was displaying the sort of faintly unnerving intelligence that was sometimes seen in Pokémon who are unusually close to their trainers, as if, through closeness, they took on a little of humanity's endless capacity for self-awareness and self-contemplation.

"Well," said Amina, "that's good. Perhaps you could bring him to see me sometime. I feel a bit like I'm his godmother, you know, since I'm the one who found him. Don't godmothers need to offer guidance to their godchildren? I can show him how to short out every light in the building in under twenty seconds, if you like."

"It would be difficult, with his paws," said Lysandre gravely, but then added, "You should come to the café on Sunday. We'll be there and we'd both be very pleased to see you."

Amina's face lit up and then clouded, leaving her looking slightly embarrassed. "Oh, Lysandre, I'd like that, it's been too long since we last had a non-Holo Caster conversation… but I have a date."

"Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'. My friends set me up. I didn't have a choice in it." Her eyes were fixed on his urgently. I'm still head over heels for you, they said, please don't think I'm not, please know I'm here whenever you want me.

"Another time maybe," said Lysandre, and dismissed her with a brief smile. She ducked her head and strode off.

That left two people in the room with him: the new resources manager and Xerosic. Xerosic was regarding the newcomer with an expression of curdled distaste, which the man was calmly ignoring.

"Yes?" said Lysandre.

Xerosic threw another dirty look at the resources manager, and then said, "I just wanted to mention Dr Rose."

"Bryony?"

"Indeed," said Xerosic, then switched to Ingrand. "She's bloody good, Lysandre, and she comes pre-converted. After her work placement's over, you should jolly well consider offering her a job in my lab. You know her brother died in the mining disaster in the Nord Pas?"

"I did not, but I suspected something similar," said Lysandre, in Ingrand.

"She's got the brains, she just needs a cause."

"We shall see," said Lysandre, then switched back to Kalosian. "Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention."

Xerosic snorted and stalked out. He was not a man to waste words on niceties.

That left Lysandre and the resources manager.

"Do you have time to discuss the direction of the Geosenge Town project?" asked the resources manager mildly.

"In my office," said Lysandre, and led the way.

Lysandre's office was located on the far side of the building, away from any of the labs or the main floor. When Lysandre has purchased the Fleur-de-Lis site, he'd had the disused buildings by the main block cleared and arranged for a kind of small park to be planted there, for the use of his employees. He found that something as small as giving them a place where they could be outside, in the fresh air, but undisturbed by the general public improved their efficiency enormously; besides, he couldn't bear looking at endless industrial vistas.

His office overlooked a private corner of this park, which was walled and quiet. His desk faced outwards, so that he could look up from his work and see the grass growing, the wind shifting the flowers, the perfect soundlessness of a garden without people.

As he entered the office, the resources manager following behind him, he saw the Litleo dozing on top of the filing cabinet. He was quite a big kitten now, and had to tuck his paws right underneath himself to fit on. The Litleo looked up when he entered.

"Hello, little one," he said. The Litleo jumped down and trotted over to rub its head against his legs. The scars burned.

It stepped back and looked up into Lysandre's face with that unnerving expression of intelligence. When he smiled at it and tickled it roughly under the chin, it purred, apparently satisfied that everything was fine, and leapt lithely out the window and into the garden. It was gone with a flick of its tail.

"What a handsome creature," said the resources manager approvingly.

"Yes," said Lysandre, unable to stop the swell of pride he felt whenever anyone admired the Litleo. "He's a good Pokémon."

"He has a very understanding little face, doesn't he? I have a Kadabra myself, sometimes I feel she's more human than I am."

"Hm." Lysandre sat down in his chair and gestured for the resources manager to sit down. Surprisingly, the man perched himself on the edge of the desk, rather than sitting in the opposite chair. He was a small and slim with finely cut features, and he put Lysandre in mind of a bird.

"I've never got on with Psychic Pokémon," Lysandre said. This was true; even though Lysandre was attracted to the idea of owning an Espeon, or even an Espurr, Psychic Pokémon tended to act strangely around him. He had a feeling they could sense the dual thoughts and it unnerved them as much as it annoyed him.

"Some people don't, I suppose," said the resources manager. Then he shook himself – very much like a bird fluffing up its feathers – and said, "There's a councillor in Geosenge Town who supports Les Chevaliers de la Flamme. It will be easier than you think to establish a site with exclusive access."

The resources manager's other job title was liaison officer.

It was a matter of some irritation and pain to Lysandre that his labs were funded by Les Chevaliers de le Flamme, a sort of consolidated lobbying group, holdings company, investment body and private army headed by his estranged father, the Comte de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt. The Comte was a deeply old-fashioned man who believed in the aristocracy's intrinsic right to rule, and as far as Lysandre could tell, his father's 'army' spent most of its time infiltrating various levels of government to ensure that the upper classes would remain the upper classes.

The resource manager's main job – the one that commanded the high salary, the one he had to keep secret – was to liaise with representatives from the Chevaliers and ensure that Fleur-de-Lis had the funding they needed and, more importantly, the influence they needed. At the head of both organisations, both backed into shadows, Lysandre and the Comte brooded like the kings on opposite end of a chess game, masterfully avoiding communicating but locked in a permanent battle for dominance.

"I've worked with Les Chevaliers before," the resources manager was saying. "I must say, Seigneur, that I do think Fleur-de-Lis could benefit from a closer relationship with them. They have the authority, the influence and the brute force, we have the brain power, a meritocracy and an activist cause that needs more attention. It makes sense."

Lysandre raised an eyebrow. "I think you'll find that the Kalosian public are more interested in our Mega Evolution research than our environmental research. People rarely like to be told what they're doing wrong."

"It might be nice to tell them, once in a while."

Lysandre didn't answer. He'd often had the same thought, occurring in his head at various levels of anger.

"Remind me of your name," he said to the resources manager.

"Hua An."

"Well, Hua An… what do you think of the methods used by Les Chevaliers? Infiltration, intimidation, bribery and so forth."

"Oh, they're terribly corrupt," said Hua An airily. "That's another reason why I think we should work more closely with them. Power should be in the hands of the good, after all."

"I would prefer not to reveal this organisation's… affiliation… with them for that very reason," said Lysandre. "It is a delicate situation." Half of the executive management board didn't know about it, including Amina.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cigarette case. "Do you smoke?"

"No, thank you."

Lysandre put a cigarette between his lips. It was his office and he could smoke if he wanted to. To his frank astonishment, Hua An produced a lighter from somewhere up a sleeve and lit the cigarette for him.

"You don't smoke but you carry a lighter?"

Hua An smiled cryptically and flicked the flame on and off.

At that moment, Lysandre saw that he wasn't here because of the politics of Fleur-de-Lis or the Geosenge Town project, but the other thing.

Lysandre was never sure whether it was something in him that they noticed, or whether it was something that he noticed in them, and they simply responded to him. It had been happening for as long as he could remember. It was the other thing at school, when one of the senior pupils had come into his room one night and asked, in a conspiratorial tone, whether he wanted to share a cigarette (his first cigarette, he remembered now). It was the other thing when he was studying at Taurosbridge and one of his fellow track team members had approached him shyly in the changing rooms, after everyone else had left, asking whether the pulled muscle in his leg hurt and whether he needed anyone to massage it. (That had been a strange and almost happy few months.)

It was the other thing that had interrupted when he was sleeping with a blue-blooded Ingrand girl in his final year at university, a philosophy student named Eliza who had a sort of limpid, classical, unfocused beauty. She'd introduced him to her twin brother Eric and his first thought had been, mon dieu, there's two of them, they should be painted, they're lovely. Then, shortly after meeting him, the twin brother had carefully brought up the other thing and somehow they'd started a perilous ménage à trois, an intricate and cruel dance that would see him going from one bed to the other and repeating his pleasures on a body that was familiar and yet, in one fundamental way, very different. He was sure that it was morally repugnant and selfish (had he heard that Eliza had tried to kill herself?) but it was also so aesthetically pleasing. It was the point in his life when he realised that beauty sometimes trumped societal mores.

It was about the other thing that Hua An was here, and he lightly laid his hand on Lysandre's thigh.

"I'm surprised you didn't try this at the interview," said Lysandre. He was still smoking.

"Well, I didn't want you to employ me just because I'm good in bed," said Hua An, and moved his hand upwards.

"No," Lysandre said sharply, and he stood up. Hua An folded his hands in his lap and put his head on one side.

"No? Seigneur, you surprise me. I'm normally quite good at picking up on these things."

Get out, thought Lysandre.

"Get out," he said.

Hua An laughed quietly and for one furious moment Lysandre seriously considered hitting him. It wasn't so much his insolence as his light-heartedness, his cheerful knowledge that if Lysandre rejected him, it was hardly the end of his world. Lysandre envied it, and it repulsed him as well; he couldn't imagine feeling that way, any more.

He found himself replaying the hand on his thigh and imagining it as Professor Sycamore (oh god) who had agreed to leave the university and (oh god, oh please no) was offering to work closely with him (oh please, I've been doing so well, don't), intimately, in fact, privately, alone with him, and (no I'm not going to do this, I'm not, I can't hear it).

He threw the cigarette into the fireplace.

"I'll leave you," said Hua An, and Lysandre was enraged again, this time by the kindness in his voice. "Don't worry, I won't bring it up again. I was just sure… but perhaps I was mistaken."

"You were mistaken," said Lysandre flatly. "Get out. And get me Geosenge."

"Oh, am I still employed?" said the man flirtatiously.

Lysandre turned a bitter, black look on him. "I do not consider it a privilege, to have to have anything to do with the Comte. Do not be flattered."

Hua An clicked his heels smartly. "As you wish, Seigneur." And he was gone.

Lysandre threw himself back into his chair. The scars burned and he pulled up one trouser leg to scratch at them, drawing blood.

Most of them were bite marks, from the Litleo. Not all of them though.

Lysandre had not had a good year, and the summer just passed had been the worst of it.

He'd known Professor Sycamore for a year and a half. Sometimes it felt as if they'd known each other for an eternity, in other lives even, and Lysandre had been enslaved by this deadening desire for as long as he had existed. At other times, it felt like the first week, the very first day, when he'd been introduced to the Professor at the launch party of his café, had looked down into the guileless face, the sweet mouth and the clear eyes, and felt his world fragmenting awfully for the first time.

He'd tried everything he could to make it stop. Nothing worked. Sometimes, through sheer effort of will, he could block it out, shut it up, but his enslavement so much a part of his being now that suppressing the longing caused a kind of dislocation. The world felt unreal, and also unclean, and he'd find himself trying to think things like, Stand up, and Be normal, while underneath his thoughts, the sub-thoughts were chittering, _you have to get rid of him, you have to destroy him, you've hidden your soul inside him, you have to save him, you need him, you need him gone, you need him so much, he should be yours, he should be vanished._

The summer just gone… What a torment, what tormenting almost-happiness that had been. Professor Sycamore's friendship was practically a trial; Lysandre felt as if he was constantly being tested for worth. He had done it, though, had spent a full three months maintaining the mask of platonic companionship with brutal self-control, although the cost had been enormous.

He'd started sleepwalking. Every night after he met up with the Professor, he'd go to bed and force himself to sleep with his wrists crossed above his head (to stop him giving in and touching himself, rewriting the day or evening they'd spent together and turning it into something sexual and savage). He'd have bad dreams about fire and destruction and cages and collars, apocalyptic and erotic, with Professor Sycamore featuring in all of them as a pet, a victim, an idol, a lover, a collaborator, an enemy, a betrayed friend, killed or living, whispering unformed words in his ears, touching him strangely, excruciatingly pleasurably.

And then he'd wake up in his kitchen, stark naked and holding a kitchen knife, or partially dressed by his front door with a box of matches in his hands, or once, memorably, in his bedroom, with a dent in his wardrobe and bloody fingers.

More often that not, the thing that woke him up was the Litleo biting him sharply on the leg. He felt so guilty about that. He'd be in the middle of a bad dream and he'd wake up and look down to see the big, worried eyes glinting up at him in the darkness, the teeth firmly embedded in his claves. He'd take the little creature up to bed with him, where it would curl against his chest (so much like another pet, so long ago) and make sad noises until it fell asleep. So he'd tried, for a while, making scores in his leg with a dagger, to see if the pain would keep him from doing it again. It worked, more or less, but it made a mess of his lovely sheets.

And, after all that, he still wanted the Professor. He wanted to hurt him and he wanted to envelop him.

He had some kind of girlfriend now, which Lysandre couldn't think about without wanting to break something.

Lysandre leaned out the window. There was an apple tree in the garden, its branches hanging over the wall, which had just started to fruit. He'd taken Professor Sycamore round Fleur-de-Lis about a year ago, when they were first starting the exchange programme with the university, and they'd passed by the walled garden outside Lysandre's office. Professor Sycamore had reached up to pluck an apple, and the whole way back to the main building, Lysandre had had to suffer watching him eat it with every sign of enjoyment, his lips wet and pulpy from the fruit. He'd eaten the whole thing, Lysandre remembered, even the seeds and the little furry bit, and Lysandre had suffered from that too, that obvious glee in devouring the thing. He'd had unstoppable mental images of forcing his hard cock into Professor Sycamore's mouth, watching him suck it with the same relish, taking it all the way to the back of his throat, bringing tears to his eyes.

"Théo," he called, trying to shake this memory, "it's time to go home."

There was a worse memory, which rose when he was sitting in his car with the Litleo, being driven back to his apartments. It started because he was remembering the conversation he'd had with Professor Sycamore the previous day. (He didn't know what he'd been thinking, trying to embroil Professor Sycamore in Fleur-de-Lis's project. They'd not seen each other for three weeks, Lysandre being desperate to avoid him after being reminded of The Girlfriend's existence; the longing must have got the better of him. He'd thought to himself, Professor Sycamore is an expert, he would be so useful, and the sub-thoughts had whispered, _it could be the two of you, the two of you together, heading Fleur-de-Lis, partners in crime, could you bear such happiness?._)

He'd been sitting there in that horrible, tasteless café with the Professor, making him that ridiculous offer, and he'd thought, well, if he says yes, we'd have to find him something red to wear, otherwise he wouldn't fit in. Why are all his shirts blue or white, anyway?

Then he'd remembered that he'd stolen one of the shirts.

This had been during the awful summer, the summer just passed. He'd arranged to meet Professor Sycamore for lunch and had gone to the university labs to pick him up. It was a sweltering day, implausibly sunny and humid. Lysandre had insisted on getting his driver to drive him the relatively short distance to the labs, because at least the car had air-conditioning.

As it turned out, the air-conditioning in the evolutionary biology department had broken.

"Oh mon dieu, Lysandre, you're making me feel heat-sick just looking at you," said Professor Sycamore when he'd walked in. The air in the office was wet and warm, and standing in it was like taking a bath in dirty hot water. Lysandre was dressed in a red shirt and black trousers, with a heavy satchel carrying his papers; Professor Sycamore was wearing light chinos, a lab coat and (he'd realised with horror and delight) nothing underneath. A crumpled blue shirt, with dark sweat stains at the collar and under the arms, was flung across Professor Sycamore's desk.

"You have to let me go and change," Professor Sycamore had said, his voice weak from the heat. "And then for goodness sake let's go and eat a tonne of ice cream."

He'd ducked into the adjoining room, which was normally occupied by his research assistant (but she was away on compassionate leave) and shut the door. The thought that, at that very moment, Professor Sycamore was taking off his lab coat and revealing his damp, beautiful body was almost more than Lysandre could bear. He'd gotten hard immediately and had to fight the urge to press himself against the door that separated them, to rock his erection against it. Then, rather wildly, he'd seized the shirt and stuffed it into his satchel.

Lunch had been tense, on Lysandre's part – he'd realised as they'd walked out the door that he couldn't show Professor Sycamore any of the papers without revealing that he'd stolen a shirt (Professor Sycamore was now wearing a much lighter cotton one in white). Fortunately, they'd managed to avoid talking about work, and Professor Sycamore really did attempt to eat his own weight in ice cream. Thank Arceus the academic was so absentminded; he'd never know where the shirt had gone.

Lysandre had gone home with the stolen shirt, feeling as if he was carrying something precious and fragile in his bag. He'd very, very deliberately let himself into his apartments through the front door, rather than the back door up the flight of stairs that would lead directly to his private apartments. He'd walked through the public floor with measured calm, thinking, I will go upstairs and have a cold bath. He'd made it up to the semi-public floor, that labyrinth of sliding doors and bamboo, and thought, And then I will go to the boxing gym. He'd been halfway across the corridor on the semi-public floor that would lead to his private apartments when the sub-thoughts had shrieked, _I can't take it do it now do it now_ and he'd flung the satchel to the floor and dropped to his knees.

He'd torn the satchel open, breaking the clasp, then pulled the sweat-soaked shirt out with one hand, the other fumbling frantically with his belt. He buried his face in the shirt as he'd hurriedly pulled his cock out, his trousers around his thighs, kneeling on the floor. He'd wrapped the shirt around his neck and mouth, breathing in the scent of the Professor, and started to tug himself roughly. He'd groaned, he'd made shameful noises into the cloth, imagining Professor Sycamore lying under him on some hot summer night, under the covers, wet with sweat and saliva, crying out his name. When he came, he bit a mouthful of the cloth and could taste the salt and sweetness of Professor Sycamore's body. It was all over in about forty seconds.

When it was over, he'd sat back on his heels and looked ruefully at the gleaming white puddle on the tatami mats. This is unbearable, he'd thought.

He thought that now, as he let himself in to the private apartments and put the Litleo down (he prompting trotted off, intent on some game on the slippery marble of the public floors). But he also knew that, because he'd been remembering that time with the shirt, he wouldn't be able to concentrate unless he did it again. Because the shirt was still there, hidden in a silk bag in his wardrobe. He hadn't been able to bring himself to throw it away.

He went into his bedroom, feeling lost and sad but also monstrously aroused.

He took the shirt out of the bag. Just this once, he thought. Just one last time. And then I have to stop.

He pressed his face into the cloth again, taking a deep breath. There was something so innocent and gentle about the scent of summer sweat, it made Lysandre feel like a criminal to be using it in this way. He threw it on the bed and undressed with his eyes closed. His arms were shaking.

By the time he was naked, he was already hard. He'd alighted on a favourite fantasy, the one where Professor Sycamore was sleeping (for whatever reason) in his bed, exposed and vulnerable. He'd wake him very gently at first – soft kisses to his neck and cheeks, a slow, lingering one on his mouth. The Professor would stir, sleepily return the kiss, sigh deeply as Lysandre ran one hand down his body, just for the pleasure of caressing him.

(In fact, Lysandre had lain face down on the bed with the shirt gathered in his arms, against his face. His cock ached deliciously, pressed between the mattress and his stomach.)

Then he'd start to be a little rougher. He'd take the Professor's wrists in his hands and hold them above his head. He'd kiss him much more deeply, pressing his full weight down on the Professor, overwhelming him.

(Lysandre started to rock his hips against the mattress, his breath coming in sharp bursts.)

When he'd felt Professor Sycamore's cock hardening against him, he'd sit up. The Professor would still be sleepy, but his body would be flushing, warming. His hard-kissed mouth would look wet and pulpy, the lips parted hungrily

(but that was the apple fantasy)

and Lysandre would kneel over him and push his hardness into the Professor's mouth.

(but that was the apple fantasy, oh but it didn't matter, the smell of him was so good, so good, he was moving faster now, his stomach smearing the pre-cum across the sheets, he was writhing wildly into the mattress)

The Professor – Augustine – would take it all, all the way down to the base. It would bring tears to his eyes, a single tear would run down his cheeks. Lysandre would take both wrists in one hand and reach back with the other one, to wrap his first around Professor Sycamore's twitching cock. He'd feel the Professor moaning, his mouth full, moaning through the fullness in his mouth

(taking it all, tasting him, working his tongue along the sensitive seam of his cock, trying to say his name, trying to say 'I'm going to come' or 'Come in my mouth, I want you to' or both, and, oh god, why did he smell so good, he wanted to hold him, he wanted to tear him apart, why did he smell so good?)

Lysandre dug his nails into the sheets. His cry was muffled by the shirt's cloth.

When it was over, he lay on his front for a few seconds, gloomily feeling the spunk beneath him turn cold and gelatinous.

He forced himself to sit up. The hair on his stomach was revoltingly matted and he thought, I really am going to take a bath.

He stared at the shirt in his hand. Suddenly, suddenly, it was just a shirt.

He felt so angry.

He stood up and strode into the living room next to his bedroom. There was a fireplace in this room. It had been made up and was ready to be lit, though so far, the weather had been too mild. But in his anger, and in his nakedness, Lysandre felt cold and blank and furious. He threw the shirt over the logs, seized the long matches, lit one after several false starts and threw it down.

It burned very merrily.

Almost as soon as the shirt took the flame, Lysandre regretted his actions. He felt as if he'd put some small but important part of his soul to the torch. But then he thought, It's better this way. If I've destroyed it, then it can't be ruined. I'll never be able to breathe that scent in again, but I'll never have to suffer the thought of it there, reminding me of what I do not have, what I can not do. I have the memory of his scent. I am the caretaker of that memory. I am the caretaker of what remains.

He watched it burn.


	4. Water

Professor Sycamore had wanted to take a lot more information about Geosenge Town to Professor Axe, but it seemed that half the records had vanished. The university's humanities library had a few pamphlets on the history of the town, but nothing dating further back than about fifty years, and the geology department had apparently 'misplaced' most of their material on the town except for a few references in some old periodicals. The librarian there sheepishly explained that, although they were in the process of digitising the entire library, somehow the material on Geosenge had been labelled 'lesser priority' and had been passed over until it was too late.

So Professor Sycamore was armed with nothing but some fairy stories, a few weak references and a nervous suspicion.

He'd arranged to meet Professor Axe for an early morning coffee at her house. He decided on the morning that he would take a bicycle out to her part of the city, which was only a twenty minute bike ride from his own. He wanted to feel fresh air and movement, an intimation of vitality. The weather had been fairly warm but the sky was dense and overcast, the colour of dull aluminium, and Professor Sycamore was starting to wonder whether he'd ever really seen the sun, or if he'd only imagined it.

He took his Braixen in the basket on front of his bike. His Fletchinder stayed at home; Professor Axe's Noivern made him anxious.

As he was cycling, stirring up the piles of leaves that lay clustered along the sides of the road, he wondered how he was going to bring the subject up. _I've been offered a position at Fleur-de-Lis_. _I don't know what to do about it. It sounds like an interesting opportunity but the project they're working on might be hazardous._

No, that would never work. Professor Axe was old-school École and for her nothing could trump the department. She'd just snap, _turn it down, you young fool_ and he wouldn't be able to go into details.

_I'm concerned that Fleur-de-Lis Labs are edging into dangerous territory. They are working on a very strange project_. No, because he didn't have any real proof of that, especially since he didn't have any material. He could hardly explain to Professor Axe that he instinctively felt that something was about to go wrong just because of the way Lysandre had looked, could he?

_I'm worried that the relationship between Fleur-de-Lis Labs and the evolutionary biology department will be jeopardised by a new project that they are working on. _No good, Professor Axe seemed to loathe Fleur-de-Lis anyway, she'd be pleased.

_Lysandre has given me a week to decide whether or not I want to leave my job and my life at the university, and he hasn't even really told me what's going on, and I'm still being tempted by it. Because I need him. He's like a drug to me. I want to drink him in like a sweet poison. _

No.

Professor Axe's bizarrely sugary confection of a house looked especially peculiar under the aching autumnal light. Professor Sycamore was surprised to see a small pile of leaves in front of her doorstep – she was normally very tidy about such things, rising early in the morning to sweep her porch clean. He put it down to an upbringing in a château where her every movement was anticipated and catered for. He could imagine her finding it claustrophobic, and even in her old age she was constantly proving her independence.

As they approached the front door, the Braixen began to growl softly.

"Vyvy," he said, slowing the bike down. "What on earth is the matter, ma belle?"

The Braixen stopped growling and looked up at him. Her eyes were very round. As he was stepping off the bike and locking it against a lamppost, he saw that she was anxiously fiddling with the twig in her tail, alternately setting it alight and putting it out. It looked like the Braixen equivalent of nail-biting.

"What's wrong, ma fille?" he asked, laying a finger on her nose. The Braixen looked at him imploringly.

Then he heard it.

A strange, keening noise was filling the air, just on the edge of hearing. Professor Sycamore strained his ears, trying to work out where the sound was coming from. It was high-pitched and rather chilling, like the very beginning of a scream drawn out and stretched thin.

It was coming from Professor Axe's house.

He rapped at the door with the ugly doorknocker. "Professor Axe!" he called. "Professor, are you there? It's me, Gus."

The noise stopped, then, after a few seconds, started again, louder and lower than before. Now it sounded like a long, softened howl on one endless note.

Professor Sycamore felt something tug at his trouser leg and look down. Vyvy had tightened one of her paws around the material by his ankle and was clutching it, looking even more worried than before.

He tried banging on the door. "Professor!" he shouted. "Professor Axe! Is everything alright? Margaux! Can you hear me?"

The noise was getting louder and lower, more like a wail now. It sounded as if it was coming closer and closer and closer, until, suddenly, there was a terrible crash and Professor Sycamore looked round to see that Professor Axe's Noivern had thrown itself through the window.

It fell out onto the street in a pandemonium of glass, wood and flesh.

"Merde!" Professor Sycamore burst out, and hurried over it to. "Blautsauger, what's going on? Oh, mon dieu, you're bleeding everywhere, you must hold still…" He tried to start tearing up his shirt for some makeshift bandages, but the Noivern lashed out and left a scratch down his arm.

"Ow!"

The Noivern struggled upright. Drops of blood pattered around the pavement like falling petals.

"Please, Blautsauger…" murmured Professor Sycamore, getting slowly to his feet. He watched the Noivern warily. It was swaying back and forth, making that strange high keening noise again.

"Margaux!" Professor Sycamore shouted through the shattered window. "Blautsauger's been hurt! Can you call him back to his Pokéball? Can you hear me?"

The Noivern gave a great shriek and jumped back through the window.

Professor Sycamore immediately tried to climb in after him, but a flash of flame startled him. He looked down to see Vyvy signalling _wait_, and watched as she leapt smoothly through the broken window, avoiding the jagged edges of the glass in the pane. A few seconds later, he heard the front door's latch click and he pushed the door open. The Braixen was hanging off it.

"Clever girl," he whispered to her.

They set off into the house, following the sound of the Noivern's keening.

Professor Axe was sat at her breakfast table. 'Sat' was a loose use of the word; 'collapsed over' was more accurate. Her forehead was on the table and she was very, very still.

Professor Sycamore looked at her and felt suddenly freezing and slow, as if he'd jumped into an icy sea. There was a sharp pain in his inner ear and his limbs seemed too heavy to move.

In the background, the Noivern howled, but he could hardly hear it. In highly-detailed slow motion, he noticed the half drunk cup of coffee sitting on the table next to Professor Axe, saw the spilled liquid on the table, reflecting the room like a dirty mirror. She must have upset the cup slightly when her head hit the table.

He moved towards her, reached out a hand to touch her hair. His hands felt cold and for a moment he worried about startling her with the iciness of his touch. Strange, he thought distantly, how the mind notices but does not necessarily understand.

He turned her face towards him. Her forehead rolling on the wooden table made a noise that was wholly insignificant, barely heard and more understood, that nevertheless he knew would haunt him for a long time afterwards. Her eyes were still open and her expression was one of faint irritation, as if death had caught her at an inconvenient time, as if it were nothing but a sloppy habit to die before one's breakfast.

He closed her eyes and knelt beside her. He knew it was impossible, but her hands, when he took them in his own, felt like they might be warmer than he'd ever be again.

In the living room, the Noivern was keening and ululating. He could hear things being smashed and kicked at. There would be blood everywhere, the room would end up looking like more of a death scene than Professor Axe's table-top ending.

"Adieu, Margaux," he whispered.

She didn't answer, of course. She would never answer ever again. He felt stupid for trying to say anything. It was a mawkish and delusional thing to do; she would have disapproved.

After a few minutes kneeling there, clasping her cooling fingers, he stood up and reached into his pocket for his phone. He dialled for an ambulance with glacial slowness and calm. I'm not crying, he thought. I wonder why I can cry over never being able to kiss a pair of bitter, bitten lips, but I can't cry when one of the most important people in my life leaves me forever?

The ambulance said that they were on their way. Professor Sycamore hung up.

He drifted into the living room, where the Noivern had exhausted itself and was lying on the floor, breathing raggedly and bleeding. His Braixen was standing beside it, touching it nervously – she blinked up at him when he came in. He drifted back into the kitchen, found some bandages, drifted out again, tracking blood into the carpets.

Once he'd bound the Noivern up, he picked up a shapeless cardigan that was cast over a sagging armchair and took it back to where Professor Axe, or what was left of Professor Axe, was sitting. He had some vague idea that he should cover her with a sheet until the ambulance arrived, but that felt too much like covering unused furniture, and he wasn't quite ready to think of her as an _it_. So he tucked the cardigan around her shoulders instead, like a parent wrapping a small child up against the cold.

Immediately he thought about what it would feel like to be dead, if you could feel yourself being dead, feeling the heat and light rising from you and leaving a cooling, collapsing shell. Perhaps she – wherever she was – was cold?

This is mad, thought Professor Sycamore, and made himself back away. He was starting to have visions of putting a scarf and a woolly hat on Professor Axe's body, and that was grotesque, treating his old friend and mentor's body like a fleshly snowman.

The ground floor was carnage and awfulness, so he went upstairs.

He'd never been in her bedroom before.

Two of the walls were taken up by bookshelves, most of which were dense academic publications, but he noticed that, closest to the bed, were a series of notebooks. He picked one out at random. Can you invade the privacy of a dead person? he wondered, but didn't pursue it, because it was too much to think about.

The notebook was bound in soft, dark brown leather that was well-worn with use. He flipped it open to reveal line after line of Professor Axe's severe Gothic handwriting. His eyes skimmed along the pages – some references to the Mega Evolution project and Professor Axe's theory on the Elemental Types Table, vague and unemotional diary entries, scribbled words that didn't make any sense to him, like 'soul-shift' and 'yvetal' and 'cellular bypass', occasional sketches of the Noivern, or the Fletchlings and Pidgeys outside her window, and…

He stopped, shocked, and flipped back.

There were only a few fragments on the page, lines hovering alone, but put together, it looked like part of a poem.

_Existence is the old sorrow_

_Forced on us by the turning world_

_We are the shuffling thing _

_The bad and broken things_

_My God, we are so vile_

_Cruel in our unconnections_

_Why did you make so many of us? _

And

_The frost is drawing in now_

_As savage as a crime_

_You say you cannot feel the cold_

_At all; I feel it all the time_

And

_I am slain; I am so lonely_

_Falling backwards into the dark_

There were more, scattered here and there throughout the notebook, interspersed with sober observations on the flowering of Professor Axe's petunias or her calculations for the exclusion theory. Reading them was like looking into a plain mask and seeing a pair of frightened eyes filled with tears behind it.

He put the notebook in his pocket and felt bizarrely cross and exhausted. Oh Margaux, he wanted to shout at the thing in the kitchen, if you were so lonely, why didn't you tell anyone? Living here alone in this weird house with your eccentricities and your sharp tongue and your scary reputation. What did you expect? How could I have helped you, if you didn't tell me?

He could hear wheels pulling up outside and went out meet the ambulance. He'd left the front door open and the leaves had blown in, carpeting the hallway. It was like watching decaying nature insidiously creep in, to reclaim the body it had leant Professor Axe's soul for nearly ninety years.

Vyvy was waiting for him by the door, and he picked her up and pressed her against his chest. The Noivern's low laments were a background noise.

"Monsieur! I am afraid I must ask you to leave the house," one of the paramedics called, coming up the front path.

He stepped into the grey day. "I would prefer to stay with her."

"I am afraid it is forbidden," said the paramedic. He had the grace to look embarrassed and threw his glance sideways. Professor Sycamore followed his eyes.

There was a large car with the crest of the Château des Aix on the door parked by the ambulance. It had evidently just arrived – the engine was still purring. When it stopped, a chauffeur hopped nimbly out of the front, came round the side and opened the crested door. A man stepped out.

Professor Sycamore didn't know much about Professor Axe's family, but he knew she had a sister, whom she loathed, and a nephew whom she referred to as 'the shit-eater', who was the de facto head of the Château des Aix. Professor Sycamore didn't need an introduction to know that this man, this expensively dressed, snotty-looking, lip-curling man, was the shit-eater.

"Augustine Sycamore? Thank you for alerting the ambulance," he drawled. He had the des Aix hooked nose and the sort of deep, woody, even tan achieved by people who holiday abroad for eight months of the year.

"Seigneur," said Professor Sycamore flatly. "I am told I cannot stay with your aunt's body."

If the shit-eater was surprised that Professor Sycamore knew who he was, he didn't show it. He was probably accustomed to being known.

"Naturellement," he said lazily. "My aunt's body, and all of her possessions, are now the property of the Château des Aix. We take care of our own." He smiled an oily smile. "Oh, don't look so surprised, monsieur. We will absorb the prodigal. She will die as she was born, a des Aix."

"She wouldn't have wanted that," Professor Sycamore burst out. "She spent her life trying to get away from you!"

The shit-eater gave him a slower and even more oily grin. "Ah, you knew her well, did you?"

"She was my friend."

The shit-eater gave a snort, as if friendship was a sort of frivolous ornament next to ancestry, and turned away. Professor Sycamore wanted to trip him up and punch him in the stomach, but something kept him from doing it. Perhaps it was the knowledge no good would really come of hitting the shit-eater, however cathartic it might feel; perhaps it was the flush of guilt, as he remembered those miserable, lonesome poems, the voice of a woman he'd known and yet must have never really known.

"What are you going to do with her things?" he shouted after the shit-eater.

"Her 'things'?"

"Her notebooks, her- her research!"

The shit-eater stopped at the front door and turned around on his heels like an automaton. "Why, monsieur," he said slowly, "we're going to burn them, of course."

Two hours later, he was pacing up and down in Professor Fortmaine's office, pulling at his hair, Vyvy safely tucked into a Pokéball.

"But they can't _do _that!"

"I'm afraid they can, Gus," said Professor Fortmaine, who was sitting behind her desk, her chin propped up on her linked fingers. "The aristocracy always closes ranks in matters of death or money."

"But why _burn_ them?"

"I imagine they are aiming for total obliteration. She was an embarrassment to them, after all. They probably imagine there is sensitive material somewhere."

Professor Sycamore remembered the notebook in his pocket. He had just enough self-control not to rummage about and check it was still there. Instead he continued his pacing, feeling nearly nauseous with distress.

Professor Fortmaine was sat very straight, but she habitually sat very straight. When Professor Axe was the head of the department, this office had been a lawless mess of paper, clothes, half-eaten lunches and even laboratory samples. Under Agathe Fortmaine, it was neat, quiet and immaculate, like the professor herself. She had cropped dark grey hair, wore exquisitely tailored dark grey trouser suits and had the clean, small face of an ageing androgyne.

He flung himself across the room and put his hands on the polished desk.

"Can't you _do_ anything?"

Professor Fortmaine sighed. "No, Gus. I can't do anything. I'm a Pokémon expert, not a lawyer." She rubbed her fingers across her lips and added, "I'm not sure whether I should tell you this, but I received a message from Didier des Aix. It arrived just before you. He much have dispatched the messenger as soon as you'd left."

"The shit-eater?" asked Professor Sycamore.

Professor Fortmaine's face didn't betray anything. "The department have been barred from the funeral services."

He stared at her.

"As I say, Gus, they close ranks."

"She didn't want to be part of their ranks, mon dieu. She changed her name, she lived in poverty as a student! She hated them!"

"I am afraid it is not always possible to maintain an independent identity in the face of a more powerful disapprover. One runs out of energy. One cannot fight everyone."

Professor Sycamore opened his mouth to wail something else about selfhood, but then shut it abruptly. Professor Axe had once mentioned that she'd hired Agathe Fortmaine when she was still Arnaud Fortmaine, although apparently she had looked exactly the same. Department rumour, confirmed by old colleagues from other universities, suggested that Professor Fortmaine changed her gender every decade or so, for inscrutable private reasons. Probably no one in Kalos knew exactly what lay under her perfectly pressed suits, except her wife.

He looked at her properly for the first time since he'd come in to the office, and he realised she looked exhausted. There were deep, dark shadows under her eyes, as if someone had dug a thumb into the clay of her face and left marks. She was shuffling some papers in front of her, with fanatical tidiness, and he noticed one which had _Geosenge Town_ written across the top. It vanished into the pile before he could start reading upside-down. At the top was another report on the department's Eevee, which had so far failed to react to a Sun Shard and a Water Stone but had apparently learnt to do backflips.

"I'm sorry," he muttered instead, "I'm- it's just so revolting, did they have her house bugged or something, how did they know she'd died?"

"The ambulance," Professor Fortmaine began, but he'd walked away, to lean against the window. It had started to rain heavily and the raindrops hitting puddles made a noise like soldiers marching.

Soundlessly, Professor Fortmaine joined him at the window. "She was my friend, too," she said quietly. "We have lost an extraordinary woman."

Professor Sycamore thought about the mystery _Geosenge Town_ document and thought: with her gone, a terrible burden of responsibility falls on your shoulders. She may have been retired but she was the éminence grise. The head of the evolutionary biology department is always the de facto Pokémon spokesperson, and if there's something wrong at Geosenge and it has something to do with a Pokémon… I'm sorry, Agathe. You're not Margaux. You're going to struggle to contain whatever this is.

And then he thought of Lysandre, and his offer, and his coruscating eyes, and he sighed so deeply that he steamed up the glass in front of his lips.

They stared out into the rain. The downpour was a solid sheet. The sound of water on water was so relentless that Professor Sycamore suddenly felt as if his heart was being covered in rainwater, sodden and struggling. He felt weak; he knew he was a weak person.

"You should take some time off," said Professor Fortmaine. "Compassionate leave. No, Gus, don't argue with me, I'm your boss. You've looked, ah, drained for a while now. You need a break."

"I can't leave the city," said Professor Sycamore.

"Whyever not?"

Because if I move too far away from him, I think I'll cease to function. I think his existence is the air I breathe, the blood in my veins, the very whorls of my brain, thought Professor Sycamore.

At that moment, there was an urgent banging on the door.

"Professor Fortmaine!" someone yelled outside. "Is Professor Sycamore in there?!"

Professor Sycamore goggled at the door and then turned to goggle at Professor Fortmaine, but she'd already started striding back to her desk. "Entrez," she called.

Harjeet burst into the room.

"Professor, thank goodness, you'll not believe this," she stammered. She was holding a crumpled sheaf of papers in her hand and her hair was in wild disarray. She looked pretty and quite mad. Professor Sycamore felt a sudden burst of affection for her and reached out to squeeze her upper arms in his hands.

"Harjeet, ma chérie, you're shaking," he said. "Sit down… there now… did you hear about Professor Axe?"

"Yes, I did and, yes, I'm so sorry, but, I'm so sorry for your loss, our loss, but, but, the data," Harjeet spluttered.

"Lentement, Dr Panghal," said Professor Fortmaine softly. "Do you need a glass of water?"

"No, no, just let me, let me," said Harjeet, and gave herself a little shake, as if she was trying to literally pull herself together. She thrust the sheaf of papers at Professor Sycamore, her hands trembling so hard that they rustled.

He glanced at them. "Oh, this is- yes, my notes on the conjectural 'Mega Stone' and its applications, a very amusing fantasy. I thought we might be able to use a Stone the way we do evolving Eevees."

Harjeet seized his wrist. "Professor- Gus- Pierre and I fed the data into the simulator. We included all your differentials. And it worked."

There was no sound in the office but that of the rain outside. Then Professor Fortmaine said,

"What?"

Harjeet was smiling now, a shaky, stunned smile with tears and joy combined in it. "Professor Sycamore sketched out the chemical synthesis of a 'Mega Stone', to use during Mega Evolution, and its application. He threw these papers out but I found them, I thought they were something else so I- we- Pierre and I fed the data into the simulator. It says it works. And we can probably combine the chemical elements somehow, they all exist, I mean it might be expensive, but I think we could make a working Mega Stone, an actual Mega Stone, I think we could do it!"

They held their breaths and stared at one another.

"Gus," said Professor Fortmaine hoarsely, "you've cracked Mega Evolution."

In the tidy little office, with the tidy little androgyne and the messy young woman, Professor Sycamore felt the world swell up and distort. He thought, with pain, of the letter he was already writing in his head to Professor Axe, who would never get to see her theory made reality, now, and only a few hours too late. He thought, too, of Lysandre, brooding over the tanks and computers at Fleur-de-Lis, his austere profile unreadable, how he would react to this news: with genuine pleasure, with a congratulatory kiss on both cheeks, but distantly, objectively, not with the shared triumph of a lover.

He had just enough restraint to cram his fist into his mouth before he screamed, but the women still looked shocked.

In the end, he'd agreed to go and visit his family for the weekend. Professor Fortmaine had tried to persuade him to stay there for a week (Harjeet nodding hard behind her), but he'd shrugged it off.

"You will at least get out of Lumiose?" Professor Fortmaine had asked, as she walked him to the door.

"Vous êtes le chef," he'd said flatly.

Now he was sitting on his bed, with an open overnight bag at his feet.

He'd called his mother and manfully held back tears over the phone. He'd started with, "Professor Axe is dead," before even saying 'hello', and then let the maternal sympathy envelope him. She told him to get on a train immediately; it was only just lunchtime, she'd said (he hadn't eaten, the thought of chewing made him feel sick), if he got the bullet train he'd be there in time for dinner. In the background he could hear his father saying, 'what's happening?' and 'Is that Gus?' and 'Is he coming to visit?' in an excited voice that broke his heart a little.

He'd sat down for fifteen minutes, trying to feel something other than miserable and lethargic, when, in quick succession, his brother Armand and his sisters Aurelia and Alexis had called and promised they'd be at dinner, if he'd only come, come immediately, they would help him. Talking to them made him feel like he was momentarily stepping into another identity, once familiar but now unused, whose expressions and responses he couldn't quite master. In an abstract way, he realised he'd be glad to see them, even through the drear smoke of sorrow in his mind.

The he'd called Dr Raine and really had wept a little, while Dr Raine made soothing noises down the phone. "I'll be back on Monday," he'd said, when he'd got himself under control.

"Don't," said Dr Raine. "Stay longer. Sunbathe. Is it warm there right now? Sunbathe anyway. Eat too much. Hug your mother."

"I have to come back," Professor Sycamore had mumbled, and Dr Raine had sighed deeply but hadn't argued.

Then – guiltily aware that he'd made these phonecalls in the wrong order – he phoned Marie to cancel their weekend date. Crying down the phone to Dr Raine had made him feel a bit washed out, so he was glassy and calm when he spoke to her.

"I was sorry to hear about your loss," she'd said.

"How did you know about it?"

"A friend of a friend," said Marie, who had dozens such mystifying acquaintances. "Apparently it was a massive heart attack. She wouldn't have felt anything, my sweet. She wouldn't have even known."

It should have been comforting, but all Professor Sycamore could think was how much it had annoyed Professor Axe, to not know something.

Then he'd called Beckett and Vyvy back to their Pokéballs, to prepare for the long train journey across Kalos.

Now he was trying to pack.

His limbs were leaden and stupid. His body was a monstrous package around his heart, a troublesome cage. He wished someone were there to force him to move.

And just like that, with the inevitability of a minute hand swinging round the clock to land on midnight, he imagined being forced about by Lysandre.

They weren't sexual thoughts, as such, although almost everything about Lysandre meant something sexual to Professor Sycamore. They were dark visions of the comfort he so badly needed. He imagined Lysandre pulling him off the bed, but his legs would buckle under him, he'd fall to his knees.

"Very well," Lysandre would say, "if you don't want to walk, you shall have to crawl."

Professor Sycamore made himself get up (he didn't crawl) and walked to his wardrobe. He grabbed at some clothes at random, flung them in the bag, sat down on the floor and stared blankly at what his mind was showing him.

Lysandre's foot would prod him in the right direction. Or, no, Lysandre would place a guiding hand on the back of his neck and tug him along, like a badly-behaved pet. Or take him by the hair and pull. "This way, Professor," he would say, "pack your raincoat, it's raining ropes."

Professor Sycamore put his head on his knees, then got up and went to find his toothbrush.

Lysandre standing behind him, meeting his eyes in the bathroom mirror. Wrapping his arms around his chest, holding him as firmly as restraints. His mouth against Professor Sycamore's ear, whispering, "There now… there now…" Lysandre's fingers digging into the gaps between his ribs, a little harder than he should, a lot harder than he should, leaving a trail of bruises like little flowers blossoming.

How can I be doing this, thought Professor Sycamore, imagining this all so vividly but also looking at my own stupid face in the bathroom mirror and knowing there's no one here?

He haphazardly packed the rest of things and stepped out into the rain to hail a taxi, imagining Lysandre taking his free hand in his own and pressing hard on that sensitive place between the tendons of his wrist.

The journey to the train station was interminable and damp, and Professor Sycamore bought his ticket and found his seat without really noticing what he was doing. He sat in a window seat and leaned his head against the window.

Normally he liked the train journey out of Lumiose City. He liked to watch the buildings fade into fields, and then hills and wildness. He was romantic about things like train journeys, and rails, even about freight trains. But today Lumiose City was shrouded by the rain, and all he could see was the hulking outlines of wet buildings and the blur of harassed people.

He wondered whether he should call Lysandre.

That was not strictly true. He wanted to call Lysandre, and he wondered whether it was a good idea. He knew it wasn't.

Despite their long almost-friendship, Lysandre and Professor Sycamore had never really phoned one another. Their communication was conducted via email, or face to face, or not at all. Sometimes Professor Sycamore thought that was just as well. It would only take a little bit of temptation for him to start calling Lysandre's voicemail daily, just to hear his voice.

There had been one occasion where he'd actually needed to phone Lysandre, and had gotten through on the second attempt. Lysandre had seemed surprised and even a little put-out; he hadn't spoken very much during the call, and Professor Sycamore had found himself gabbling and repeating his sentences to cover up the awkwardness. He must have been speaking utter nonsense too, because he was mostly concentrating on trying to hear Lysandre breathing – the thought that he had Lysandre's voice, captive and close to his ear, had occurred to him suddenly and had immediately been dreadfully arousing. He could move the earpiece anywhere, could have Lysandre's transferred breaths passing over his neck, his chest, his shoulders. He'd even held the earpiece of the phone to his lips briefly, while Lysandre was giving some cold routine answer, and knew it was the closest he'd get to pressing his mouth against Lysandre's.

Near the end of the conversation, he'd started to despair (as he was sometimes wont to do, around Lysandre) and his voice had trailed away. From the other end of the line, he thought he could hear noises. They were barely noises, subdued and half-heard, underwater sounds, the sort of sound water made when it moved against water in a wider ocean. They came from somewhere deep and quiet, if they were there at all.

"Lysandre?" he'd asked, his voice quavering.

There'd been a pause, and Lysandre had said, "Oui, j'écoute," and the noises seemed to disappear.

But were you listening? Professor Sycamore thought. Were you listening? Because it you'd been listening properly, surely you could have heard the desire in my voice, mon dieu, the longing, you would have been able to pick out the pleading notes, the rise and fall in timbre, the echoes of worship. Instead I'm just a slightly irritating hum in your ear, making nonsensical noises. Sometimes I wish you'd hate me, just because there's passion in hate. I can't stand being a supporting character in your drama. Loathe me, threaten me, beat me, burn me, only don't disregard me.

He felt worn-out with the intensity of his obsession.

Somehow, he thought, somehow I must stop this, I must end it.

He watched the city slide past, like a submerged kingdom under the rain.


	5. Grass

Adieu, fond hope of mutual fire,

The still-believing, still-renew'd desire;

Adieu, the heart-expanding bowl,

And all the kind deceivers of the soul!

But why? ah tell me, ah too dear!

Steals down my cheek th' involuntary Tear?

Why words so flowing, thoughts so free,

Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee?

- Alexander Pope, 'Imitation of the First Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace'

Professor Sycamore came from a village in South Kalos that he sometimes liked to claim was about forty years behind the rest of the region. He said this self-deprecatingly, but really he was deeply fond of his home. It existed in a bubble of nostalgic beauty, somehow gentler and more kindly than the world around it.

Even on the new bullet train, the journey took the best part of a day. Once he got to the end of the line, he had to take another train from the biggest local town and then a bus to get to his home village, Petit Meaulnes. Night had already spread its soft blanket against the sky by the time he arrived (even the nights here were kinder, a blanket rather than a shroud).

The spire of his parents' house stood out against the deepening dark like sentinel, as if the whole building had been waiting up for him. The sight was comforting and Professor Sycamore started to walk faster when he saw it, suddenly desperate to be in a crowded dining room, surrounded by noise and chatter and irrelevant, good-natured arguments.

Not many people in Petit Meaulnes had spires on their houses, but then again, only one family lived in the village school.

Iris Sycamore, Professor Sycamore's mother, had been the school's headmistress since before Professor Sycamore was born. She and her family lived in the little house that appended the school proper; both buildings were about two hundred years old, built sturdily with local stone, and filled with rafters and draughts and the smells of chalk dust and coal fires.

The little house was ideal for a couple with two young children. Unfortunately, the Sycamores had had four, and four raucous ones at that, so Professor Sycamore and his brother Armand had moved into the attics of the actual school after their sister Aurelia was born. Professor Sycamore's father, Georges, the village handyman, plumber and jack-of-all-trades, had knocked through a wall and built a high covered walkway linking the roofs of both buildings so that Armand and Augustine could access the children's shared bathroom on the top floor of the house. (It was an architectural eccentricity that attracted much tutting from the elders of the village, but the kids had loved it.)

The bathroom had two doors, one of which led into the corridor of the house proper, and one (almost always locked) that led to Alexis' room. When they were young children, this was ideal for spooky evenings and night terrors – the two boys could race into the house and beg their older sister to read them a story, or insist on making a fort in her room and falling asleep in a nest of blankets and soft toys on the floor. When they were older, and it was too cold to go outside, the three of them used to sneak into the bathroom and share illicit cigarettes, blowing smoke out of the window. (Aurelia, the youngest, was tolerated in the bathroom on these occasions, but she would make a point of covering her mouth with a wet flannel and complaining about the smell.)

Professor Sycamore stopped at the door of the house and took a deep breath. Inside he could hear happy raised voices, the homely sound of people pushing furniture around and clattering cutlery. It was his home, it was where he had come from, it was where he had always belonged. It was a place where he would always be assured of a welcome, no matter how long he'd been away or what had happened in the intervening time. And yet, he felt like an intruder.

He let the Braixen and the Fletchinder out of their Pokéballs and knocked on the door.

The door opened instantly, as if someone had been waiting hopefully behind it.

"Gus!" shouted his father, and reached up to fling his arms around his son's neck, before placing to great, moustache-bristling kisses on both his cheeks. "Everyone! Gus is here!"

He took Professor Sycamore by the arm and dragged him in. The Professor's Pokémon followed, hurrying ahead of the two humans to reach the dining room.

"Tell him he's late," came Alexis' hoarse voice from the dining room, "quelle bâtard."

"You're not late at all," said his mother, coming out of the kitchen, "you're just on time. Hello darling." She squeezed round her husband to give Professor Sycamore a long, rib-squeezing hug. "I'm so sorry about Professor Axe," she whispered, as Georges Sycamore went trundling off. ("I'll just drop your stuff off somewhere and then I'm going to get you a drink! Some wine! All the wine!")

"Thanks, maman," he mumbled. "Let's not talk about it just yet."

She gripped his hands, and he remembered that his mother had a tough grip. "We'll talk about anything you want, whenever you're ready," she said. He kissed her on the forehead.

"Alex is here as well," she said. "All my little chickens are back in the nest! When was the last time you saw Lia?"

Professor Sycamore felt a pang of shame. "Eh… five or six months ago, I suppose? She came up to visit…"

"You should see her now, she's enormous."

She gave him another kiss and let him totter off into the dining room.

Aurelia was the first thing he saw, because she'd stood up to come and greet him and she _was_ enormous.

"Mon dieu, Lia," he said, "what are you going to give birth to, a Snorlax?"

Aurelia grinned proudly and kissed her brother, with some difficulty. "It's gonna be a big baby, Gus. It's gonna come out fighting."

"Now there's a good image to have before dinner," muttered her husband, Luc. She smacked him and he gave her a huge, lovestruck grin.

"Where does it come out?" lisped a little voice from near to his knees, which was overridden by another one shouting, "UNCLE GUS UNCLE GUS WHY WON'T PAPA LET ME CATCH A BRAIXEN LIKE YOURS."

He smiled with real delight. The little voice had come from his five-year-old niece, Marguerite, known as Mimi. He knelt down to flick one of her pigtails.

"Don't you have a kiss for your old uncle?" he asked her.

Mimi dutifully kissed him and then repeated, "But where does it come out?"

"She'll sneeze it out," said her father, Professor Sycamore's older brother Armand. He caught Professor Sycamore's eye and winked.

"It'll explode out of her stomach," muttered Alexis, his older sister, but Armand elbowed her sharply in the ribs and she yelped.

"It's a mystery, isn't it," said Professor Sycamore to Mimi. "I wonder myself."

Mimi gave him a disapproving little frown and tugged at his hair. "You're silly," she declared, and then abruptly turned and ran under the table.

"UNCLE GUS CAN I HAVE A BRAIXEN."

This came from Professor Sycamore's nephew, Philippe, known as Fizz, who was seven years old and petting Vyvy with an expression of strained ecstasy.

"Ask your maman or papa! And come and give me a hug."

"THEY'LL SAY NO THOUGH," shouted Fizz, who wasn't hugging anyone until someone promised to get him a Braixen.

"What have I said about using your indoor voice, Fizz," said his mother, Lucinde, who was sitting on the floor next to Fizz with a glass of wine and looking tired but content. Professor Sycamore had to go back to kneeling to kiss her hello.

In fact Fizz was probably the most sensible person in the room, with was a pandemonium of Pokémon and people and not at all conducive to indoor voices. Beckett the Fletchinder had gone to sit on a high shelf next to his mother's Hoothoot and his brother's Pidgeot but all the other Pokémon were all over the place (except Aurelia's Goomy, which was snoozing peacefully in a gravy boat). He had to step over a huge Pokémon to get to his older brother and sister, a beautiful Seviper from Hoenn which belonged to Alexis, the only professional Pokémon trainer among them. Alexis had been out of the region for almost a year – she'd only returned to Kalos in the past fortnight, tanned and battered but with a strange light in her eyes.

"Sit down," said Armand, pulling him into a chair between them. Mimi climbed onto his lap and he absentmindedly fed her a bit of bread. "I'm sorry about everything."

"Thanks. Let's not talk about it tonight though." Armand squeezed his shoulder just as Georges Sycamore came blundering in with an overfull glass of wine.

"Had to help your mother," he said cheerfully, "it's a big old meal! Hope you're hungry."

"I could eat a house," said Professor Sycamore, with some honesty – he hadn't been able to eat all day. He leaned against Armand (letting Mimi reach out for his wrist and start playing with his watch) and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to let his mind settle, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling that he was doing something wrong by being here.

"Can you handle dinner?" asked Armand quietly.

"Yes. Sorry. The journey…"

"Mm." Armand briefly 'chinned' him – dug his chin into his brother's head, which was the preferred expression of affection between the four siblings. He felt Alexis reach out and knock her knuckles against his own chin, like a cat looking for attention.

"I have some news for you, little bro," she said. "But you have to eat something first."

"À table, tout le monde!" called his mother, and with much scraping and nudging and cries off, 'here, that was my fork!' and 'you're on my foot, you damn fool', the humans settled round the table and the Pokémon settled around them.

Dinners chez Sycamore were always slightly chaotic occasions at the best of times, and this was a fuller table than usual. Their father had proposed a toast to Alexis' return and the 'new little one' soon to join the family. "But I can't drink!" Aurelia had protested in a mock-wail.

"Alors, Lia," said Alexis, in her hoarse voice, "let us toast one another in our own fashion." And with some theatricality, she'd lobbed a cherry tomato at Aurelia, who had caught it neatly in her mouth and sent one back, where it bounced off Alexis' nose.

"Ohhhh, Alex, you ruined it!" she groaned, but Mimi and Fizz, delighted with the idea of dinner as projectile weaponry, had turned the salad into a ballistic course, much to Lucinde's chagrin and Armand's quiet amusement. Once they'd calmed the children down, Iris Sycamore had suggested a toast to the whole family being together again, but Professor Sycamore, unable to stop himself, had burst out, "_But where is Uncle Bones?_" and everyone had cracked up.

"Uncle Bones!" boomed Georges, banging his fist on the table. "Now there's a good one! Where's Uncle Bones!"

Uncle Bones had been a character in one of Iris' many bedtime stories. He was a skeleton with a limp and a trilby hat, which had been hysterically funny when they were children. They'd liked him so much that they'd eventually turned him into part of the family, and used him as a scapegoat – 'I didn't eat the last bonbon, Uncle Bones took it!' 'I didn't smash that jug, it was Uncle Bones!' When they were a bit older, Uncle Bones had become the centre of some stupid adolescent sex puns, courtesy of Alexis, and that had been hysterically funny too, when they were adolescents.

It was the plat principal before Professor Sycamore thought to mention that he'd apparently cracked Mega Evolution, and he might as well have admitted to secretly being a Wailord. Luc actually threw his knife in the air with excitement, which made everyone scream, and Alexis slapped her brother on the back so hard that he spat out his food.

"You get those brains from your mother," roared Georges, who had turned quite red.

"You're damn right he does," said Iris, satisfied.

"Let us toast you in our own fashion," Armand said, and tried to poke a mange tout into his ear.

Professor Sycamore could feel his face settling into a habitual smile, his body loosening with habitual relaxation, though there was some hard, cold part of him that was embedded deep in his heart, like a bullet, that wouldn't let him feel entirely without pain. Professor Axe came up just once (she got a toast too, a proper and solemn toast) and Lysandre not at all, but he thought about them both so much, through the laughter and the jokes, that they might as well be hovering over the table, the ghosts at the banquet.

He looked round table at his family, wondering if anyone could tell that he was distracted.

The Sycamores were a good-looking family, with the same darkly curling hair, smooth olive skin and eyes in shades ranging from misty grey-green to deep moss. Iris and Georges Sycamore were both grey-haired by now, their faces lined, their bodies less vital, but they both still had sharply sparkling, vivacious eyes.

Alexis, as a child, had been a tough-talking a tomboy, and as an adult she had more than a whiff of Professor Fortmaine about her, comfortably androgynous and deeply striking to look at. She was the only child who spoke the South Kalosian dialect peculiar to their area, which she had been taught by Georges, a lifelong native, and like their father, she smoked a pipe. Despite this strong tie to their homeland, she'd been the only one to become a Pokémon trainer, and spent most of her time in other regions, getting into all sorts of interesting peril.

Armand, the next in line, was a quietly attractive man with an ineffable, slightly sad quality of gentleness. He and Augustine were fifteen months apart but were often mistaken for twins, especially as they had been so close as children. He wore glasses, probably rendered shortsighted by the close work required in his job – a watchmaker – and lived with his family in the big town closest to the village.

Professor Sycamore was the third child, his features identical to Armand but somehow emphasized by his natural energy and flirtatiousness, his good looks underscored by his willingness to laugh (or at least until now). Then there was Aurelia, several years younger than him, the stunning beauty of the family, a petite woman with waist-length hair and huge, darkly-lashed eyes. She had gone to the Université du Sud-Kalos but had returned to Petit Meaulnes after graduating, her husband in tow. Now she worked at the school as a teacher, amused by the prospect of her mother being her boss.

Professor Sycamore knew he was lucky, to have such a loved and loving family. He often took it for granted because he'd never known anything else. The only time he really thought about what it would have been like to be unhappy in your own home was on the very rare occasions that Lysandre talked about the Comte de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt, and, even more rarely, the late Comtesse, and that was only because he unpicked and analysed each scrap of information he was given about Lysandre with fanatical devotion, attempting exegesis on his every utterance. He was, he knew, like a poor disciple at the feet of a beloved prophet, internally writing the biography of a man he would never understand, never be allowed close enough to try to understand.

He gazed round at his family and wondered what it would be like to bring Lysandre to Petit Meaulnes.

Only seconds afters this occurred to him, he realised he should never have allowed himself to wonder that, because as soon as he thought about the situation which would allow him to bring Lysandre here, the pain in his heart intensified and spread. Isn't it amazing, he thought distantly, that anguish can actually be a physical sensation? What a miracle the body is, to be sure.

It would have to be (he thought) a world in which the bitten curve of Lysandre's mouth was willing and sweet against his own, and not only willing but familiar. It would have to be a world beyond the incandescent fantasies that had tormented him until now, those erotic and damaging visions of sex and violence. In fact, it would have to be a world where Lysandre was his lover – not just in the sexual sense of the word, but in the fullest sense: a man who was his companion and partner.

He stared down at his plate and tried to shut off the flow of his thoughts, without success.

There would be Lysandre sitting at the hectic, happy dinner table, beside Professor Sycamore, possibly wearing that dark red cashmere jumper that had always made Professor Sycamore want to rub up against him like a cat. Lia would be gushing some friendly nonsense at him, Iris would be piling more food onto his plate (and, knowing his mother, saying something like, 'you've got very big hair, you need to feed it') and Lysandre would be smiling a faintly terrified but enchanted smile. He'd fumble for Professor Sycamore's hand under the table and Professor Sycamore would squeeze it, to let him know that he was doing fine. They'd hold hands under the table for slightly too long, each one awkwardly trying to eat with only one hand, reluctant to let go of the other, their fingers interlocked.

(Professor Sycamore dug his fingernails into his palm, badly upset by that mental image. He heard Lucinde say something, replied, "Eh, nearly nine o'clock, I think," and Armand leaned over and stage-whispered, "She asked you to pass her the salt.")

After a few bottles of wine – and at big family dinners, they did always manage to get through a few bottles of wine – Lysandre would become animated. He'd turn on that rare, electric charm of his and captivate the entire table with some story from his days in Ingrando or his work at Fleur-de-Lis. Under the table, his thigh would press hard against Professor Sycamore's, or perhaps he would gently hook a foot around Professor Sycamore's ankle, as a quiet reminder that Professor Sycamore belonged to him. And maybe, just maybe, after he'd made everyone laugh and the conversation had moved on to some other matter, he'd turn to Professor Sycamore and, very lightly, touch his throat, or pass his hand once over Professor Sycamore's hair, or even give him one kiss on the cheek, affectionately. Lovingly? Lovingly.

(He looked up from his empty plate to see that both his mother and Alexis were scrutinising him thoughtfully. Alexis pressed one finger into his temple, quite hard.

"Ow!")

And then, after dinner, Professor Sycamore would take him on a walk through the darkened village, pointing out the important places of his childhood. They'd walk all the way to the village boundaries, look out at the fields that stretched beyond into the vast, friendly night.

"I've always wanted to come here," Lysandre would say, "ever since I found out it was the place that created you. I like imagining you here as a boy, growing up, becoming a man, every moment bringing you closer to the moment you meet me."

"You like imagining all that taking place in this rustic little backwards village? Mon ami, are you sure that you don't find it parochial and dull?"

"Every street, every cobble, every lamplight reminds me of you."

"I hope that's not too arduous," Professor Sycamore would say, playing for compliments.

And Lysandre would pull him into his arms and say, "It's only right that everything here will always remind me of you, because you are everything to me." And he'd kiss him, with the unhurried tenderness of a man who knew he was kissing what he owned and what owned him.

Professor Sycamore felt a sudden swoop of vertigo, as if he'd just peered over a ledge to see a chasm so deep there were clouds forming in its depths. He was dizzy, worried that he might fall forwards into his plate. A new kind of anguish had overtaken him, a slower and deeper kind, growing up out of his soul like a strange sad weed. He realised that it was heartbreak, pure and simple, untouched by lust or hunger. His heart was breaking. It was breaking right there at the dinner table and no one could see.

xxxx

Professor Sycamore helped wash up. The kitchen was really only big enough for three people, and one of those people should probably not be eight months pregnant, but the siblings had all squashed themselves in anyway, relishing the chance to gossip, leaving the rest of the dinner party to chat comfortably in the living room.

Professor Sycamore was on plate-washing duty. Aurelia, who had been sitting at the opposite end of the table from Professor Sycamore and hadn't had much of a chance to talk to him, took the opportunity to bash her bump into her brother and chin him hard between the shoulder blades, which was as high as she could reach.

"Tell me about your life," she demanded.

Professor Sycamore puffed his cheeks out and blew air through his lips in a dismissive raspberry. "Oh, you know, the usual… I am a genius, everyone loves me, I have great hair and nice teeth and so on."

Aurelia slapped him lightly and then immediately launched into a graphic description of pregnancy constipation, which caused Alexis to say, "Oh holy _fuck_ I am getting my tubes tied."

They were not efficient washers. It took them an hour and a half to finish a twenty-five minute task, mostly because they had to keep stopping and gesticulating at one another, and laughing and banging things. It was nearly one in the morning by the time they were finished, by which time the elder Sycamores had given up and wished everyone goodnight.

Aurelia and Luc lived in the village, so were seen out of the door with much kissing and waving and promises of breakfast the following day. Armand and Lucinde were staying in the little house with the children, who were still awake and hysterical with the strung-out energy of children who have never even seen midnight before and had been driven crazy with excitement.

"I can't go to bed," Fizz was wailing. "I have to see the little hand come round and sit on the two!"

"You can see that at lunchtime tomorrow," said Lucinde briskly, and gave Armand a Look. He gave a great yawn.

"Alright, mes petits," he said, "il faut faire dodo. Let's see you start climbing those stairs. Gus, where are you sleeping?"

"My old bedroom, I expect," replied Professor Sycamore.

"And I have _your_ old bedroom, Armand, worse luck," said Alexis in her throaty drawl. "But we're going outside to have a smoke before bed."

"We are?"

"Yes, Gus, we are. Come down and join us when you've knocked those kids out, Armand, we'll be in the Sorry Log. Bon nuit, Lucinde."

Professor Sycamore let his sister pull him out the back door.

The garden of the house was separated from the playing fields for the village school by nothing more than a low fence and some rose bushes. Alexis and Augustine leapt over these easily and started to walk across the field to the Sorry Log.

The Sorry Log was actually an enormous felled tree at the end of the field, overgrown with moss and crawling with various small Bug and Grass Pokémon. It was like a little neutral island. Part of the trunk had been scooped out by natural processes, forming a deep, woody pocket. It was so large that it was possible for a small group of humans to tuck their bodies inside the hollow in order to, for example, shelter from the rain if a sudden downpour occurred during a ball game, or, to take another example entirely at random, come out on summer nights and smoke without hypothetical mothers finding out. The tree had been the locus of several wild parties where they were teenagers, with couples taking it in turns to kiss in the hollow while everyone else sat on the trunk and passed bottles of wine up and down the line like an alcoholic construction line, or else danced in the field to the music on a portable radio. It was amazing how cool the school grounds were when no one actually had to be at school.

The Sycamores had called it the Sorry Log because they always used to apologise to it before crawling inside.

The two siblings rounded the tree and, with care, folded themselves into the hollow.

"Sorry, log," said Professor Sycamore.

"Yes, sorry, log." Alexis settled back and dug around in her pocket for her pipe and a pouch of tobacco.

"Have you got any rolling papers?"

"Here." Alexis reached into another pocket and dropped them into his hand before passing him the pouch. Professor Sycamore rolled himself a cigarette with care, concentrating excessively. He was imagining taking Lysandre out to the Sorry Log on some warm evening and tangling together with him in the hollow, delicious claustrophobia, moaning quietly into his neck while, above them, the stars winked.

"You're distracted," said Alexis. She lit a match and her handsome profile was illuminated briefly. As she got older, she was looking more and more like a female version of their father.

"Yes, I suppose I am."

"You're sad too." She sucked hard on her pipe (a revolting noise that had always put Professor Sycamore off pipe-smoking) and handed him the matchbox. "Lia and Armand noticed."

"Oh?" He didn't have the energy to say anything else. He was starting to wonder whether this was an offshoot of depression; you ceased to react to peoples' reactions, you dwelt in the same tedious recursive circle of grey sadness, endlessly repeating your own dull moods.

"You might think that Lia is on Planet Baby but she noticed alright," said Alexis, whose first reaction, upon being presented with her baby nephew, had been to frown and say, "Well, what do you want me to do with him?"

"Ah?"

"I know you're very sad about Professor Axe. I understand that. It's an- awful loss." She blew out a cloud of smoke. "Awful."

"Yes." He'd managed to get a match lit and was now putting it to the cigarette with trembling hands. Please, he was thinking, please Alex, stop.

"But there's something else, isn't there?"

"Alex."

"Well? Isn't there?" She chinned him sharply, making him jump. "Gus. Come on. You're not yourself, you've been doing an impression of yourself all evening but you're like a parody of you. If I didn't know any better I'd say you were on drugs. What's the matter? You can tell us. We could help you."

Professor Sycamore shook his head and took a deep drag on the cigarette. The tip glowed in the darkness and he briefly, wildly, considered stabbing the lit end into his palm, in case the pain distracted him enough that he would stop thinking about Lysandre.

Alexis watched him for a few seconds then sighed. "Alright. I won't push it. You were always the stubborn one, but you hid it under that famous charm of yours." She tapped the stem of her pipe against her teeth. "Enfin, let me distract you then. I have some news."

"Are you going to regale me with some of your thrilling adventures?" asked Professor Sycamore. "Were you dashing? Did you dash?"

"Shut up a moment." Alexis puffed away, apparently searching for the right words. Finally she said, "When I first got back to Kalos, I stopped off in Vaniville Town. I have a- an old friend there." Old lover, Professor Sycamore mentally supplemented. "Well, I was a little lax and I got a little tipsy and what with one thing and another, I accidentally let a Pokémon out of a Pokéball. A recently captured one." She puffed again. "A Gengar, actually."

"Mon dieu, Alex." Alexis, as a Pokémon trainer, had more Pokémon than the rest of the family put together, but this did also mean she didn't have time to sufficiently train all of them. Besides, capturing a Gengar was generally seen as a heroic gesture – one didn't necessarily ever train or use them, one was simply doing the right thing by containing the malicious creatures in a Pokéball.

"It went on the rampage, as only Ghost Pokémon can. I hope I don't have to paint you a picture."

"My goodness, please don't."

"There was this girl…" Alexis frowned. "She was out with some friends for the evening, on her way to the cinema or the milkshake bar or the gun range or wherever teenage girls go nowadays... anyway, I went tearing out after that bloody Gengar, trying to call the wretched thing back and she just… She stepped out into the road and… I don't know. It stopped. It seemed puzzled. And she had a spare Pokéball and she… I don't know how she did this, but she got it contained _without it even putting up a fight_."

Professor Sycamore drew his breath in sharply. "And then?"

"Well, I congratulated her, of course, gave her some hearty kisses on the cheek and also a schpiel about not being so damn foolish, stepping out in front of a Gengar… And I found out her name. Because I think we're going to be hearing it a lot in the next year or so. I think she's a champion in the making."

"What's her name?"

"Serena."

"Hola, Alex, Gus, are you there?" shouted a voice across the field.

Alexis put two of her fingers in her mouth and gave an ear-splitting whistle. They heard a scrabble and a grunt as Armand tried to climb over the Sorry Log to get to them. A short shower of moss and a yelp preceded the appearance of his face above the hollow, upside-down, his glasses askew.

"Oh good, nicotine," he said. His face disappeared and the heard him adjusting his footing before jumping down with an 'unf'. He tucked himself on Professor Sycamore's other side.

"Sorry, log," he said. "Gus, share that with me."

Professor Sycamore passed his brother the cigarette and stared out over the fields. A scrubby sort of wood began about twenty feet away from them, really just a fringe between fields, but it was sufficiently deep enough to have been a perfect place for long games of hide and seek.

"Are you thinking about the Talonflame?" asked Armand, following his eyes.

He hadn't been, but it was as good a memory as any other. "I can't believe you persuaded me to climb up that tree."

"You didn't take much persuading, mon vieux," said Armand.

The Talonflame nest had been built at the top of the tallest tree in the almost-forest, one superlatively sunny spring when Alexis was ten, Armand was eight, Augustine was seven and Aurelia was three. They'd seen it from the windows of the attic rooms in the school and had immediately started plotting to climb up and get a better look. They'd conducted Operation Big Bird under cover of extreme secrecy, which is always suspicious to any parent – Iris found out after about two hours.

Georges had intervened at that point, and had taken his children out to the forest with a long ladder. "Alors, les enfants, watch carefully," he'd said, and starting winching the ladder up towards the nest.

They'd stared upwards with their heads tipped back and their mouths slightly open, with the seriousness of scientists watching an experiment (even Aurelia, who, at three, didn't fully understand what was happening). They were thinking the same thought with such intensity that it almost manifested itself as a sound: _if Papa gets the ladder all the way to the top, I can climb it._

The ladder had reached its highest point. Georges had slowly, slowly, started to lean I against the tree.

For a few seconds: nothing. Peace. Victory. Then a red-hot bolt of flame shot out of the branches and set the top of the ladder on fire.

Georges brought it back down quickly and doused the fire with the bottle of water he'd squeezed into his belt before they'd set out. "And there you have it," he told he gobsmacked children. "Don't try and bother those birds unless you want to end up on their barbeque. You see how carefully the mummy controlled her flame? She didn't even singe the leaves! And she will melt the teeth right out of your head."

That night, Armand, Augustine and Alexis had gathered in Alexis' room and come up with an alternative plan.

"She got scared because it was a ladder poking into the air," said Alexis reasonably. "If you just climbed up the tree, a bit at a time, she'd get used to the noise and it wouldn't worry her, so by the time you got to the top, she'd be relaxed and asleep."

This was delivered in a voice so sensible that neither boy had thought to argue with her.

"You'd need to be very nimble to get up that tree," said Armand thoughtfully.

"You'd need to be small," said Alexis. "To get between branches and things."

They'd both turned to look at Augustine.

"Quoi?" he'd said, but his heart was already soaring. He was going to make his brother and sister plead with him, but he was going to do it. _He was going to touch a Talonflame._

In the end Armand had agreed to give him half of his 'ghost leaf' collection (leaves which they had found where most of the leaf had rotted away, leaving a fine filigree of leaf veins attached to the delicate central wand). Alexis had promised… well, actually, it was never clear what Alexis had promised, although she had given a vague impression of agreeing to _something_. And then they'd been at the bottom of the tree, and his older siblings had been looking at him expectantly, and he'd thought _now_.

The tree had looked much more scaleable from the ground. After he was about four feet up, he'd realised that the branches, which had looked so solid, were creaking and precarious, that the footholds, which had looked so plentiful, were actually few and far between. He'd realised, without panic but with a sort of rising awareness, that his arms couldn't support his body weight indefinitely.

He wasn't sure how high up he managed to get, but the ground was very far away and the sky suddenly very near when lost his balance and fell back to earth.

He'd hit the ground with a 'crump' that was definitely not a good sound. He heard Alexis scream and Armand start sobbing, Alexis yelling, "GET PAPA," and the sound of Armand's heaving gulps receding into the distance, bouncing in timbre as the boy ran. He'd been vaguely aware of a white hot pain in one of his arms and in his chest but it felt like white hot pain happening to someone else's body.

In fact, he felt wonderful. He stared up at the sky between the branches and saw the clouds making shapes like people beckoning. The grass beneath him was lifting like a magic carpet, bearing him away.

Alexis was kneeling beside him at some point, crying snottily and repeating his name. He couldn't remember how to reply but he'd smiled at her, very slowly, to let her know that he was feeling marvellous.

In the distance there was more commotion, the sound of his parents shouting, approaching fast. He stared up at the sky and thought he saw a flame falling from the sky towards him and thought (though he never really understood why, not even decades later, as an adult) _of course that's how it ends, with a flame._ But it wasn't a flame. A baby Fletchling had chosen that moment to learn to fly.

He'd smiled at that, too.

Of course, reality kicked in when they tried to move him and the pain became agonising and very immediate. He'd shrieked so hard he gave himself a sore throat. In the end it turned out he'd fallen from a height of about seven feet, and broken his arm and two of his ribs, but it could have been a lot worse. He could, as his stricken mother kept repeating, have hit his head, or broken his neck.

While he was convalescing in bed one day – long after the terror had worn off, when he could brag about his fall and get everyone to sign his cast – he'd heard rapping at his window. It was the little Fletchling from the accident. He let it in and it hopped around the room, wearing a curiously old expression, and landed lightly on his shoulder to nibble at his ear. That was how he'd met Beckett – although it was several more years yet before he was allowed a Pokéball to catch him and make him his own.

Alexis, Armand and Augustine, much older now, but not much wiser, stared out into the wood.

"Mon dieu," said Alexis slowly, "we got into _so much trouble_."

For some reason, this observation was hilarious, and they all started to laugh.

Professor Sycamore snuggled down into the hollow and pinched the cigarette out of Armand's fingers. "I wish Lia was here," he said.

"So do I," said Armand morosely. "She used to be a baby and now she's having a baby, can you believe it?"

"How quickly time passes," said Alexis hoarsely. "How little time we have to do the things we need to do."

"Yes," Augustine whispered, almost inaudibly.

They watched a sudden cold wind ruffle the grass, like a series of piano keys, and the forest made a sighing noise.

xxxx

Professor Sycamore was woken up the next morning by children bouncing on his bed.

"Uncle Gus," Mimi was chanting, "Uncle Gus, Uncle Gus, Uncle Gus, Aunt Alexis says you have to come down for breakfast NOW otherwise they're going onna, onna WALK without you."

Professor Sycamore groaned and sat up on his elbows. "Mimi," he said weakly, "do you wake your papa up like this?"

"No we jump on his stomach but he said we weren't allowed to do that because you'd throw us out the window!" Fizz said in one breath.

He lay still for a few seconds, then with a great shout thrashed his arms out and caught his niece and nephew around their waists. They fell down, giggling, and Mimi stuck her foot in his face.

"You are so naughty!" Professor Sycamore told them. "What am I to do with you? Perhaps I will throw you out the window anyway." He managed to pick Mimi up but Fizz, with much crowing, tumbled off the bed and skipped out of the way.

"Uncle Gus," he asked, as Professor Sycamore kicked his legs free of the covers, "how come you're wearing Psyduck pyjamas?"

"I like Psyducks," said Professor Sycamore, with all the dignity he could muster.

"Psyducks are rubbish, _I _want a Delphox," said Fizz firmly. Professor Sycamore stood upright with Mimi in his arms, remembered that he was not a bouncing youngster anymore, suffered a violent headrush and fell back onto the bed.

By the time he'd chased the children out of the room and strolled across the corridor, to the fondly remembered walkway, and into the bathroom to shower and dress, he'd almost missed breakfast. He didn't know why he slept so deeply, these days. He always thought that unhappy people couldn't sleep at all, or stayed up all night worrying and whimpering, but he would find himself switching off, plunged into the nightmarish otherworld of dreams, almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. He knew his new ability to sleep so deeply annoyed Marie profoundly, but he couldn't do anything about it.

Outside in the fields, the family Pokémon were playing. The Hoothoot and the Pidgeot were taking it in turns to pick up the smaller Pokémon, fly a short distance at a low height with them in their claws, and drop them gently on the ground. There seemed to be some sort of game taking place, the rules of which would be obscure and curious to any human.

Sitting by the window of the dining room, Professor Sycamore looked out to see his Fletchinder and his Braixen sitting slightly apart from the game. Beckett was sat on the ground with his feet tucked under him, and Vyvy was leaning against him, her arms flopping over his back, her cheek nuzzled against his neck.

Professor Sycamore liked seeing Beckett sit down with his feet tucked under; he'd once told Beckett that it made him look like a dear little chicken, and the Fletchinder had been offended for a month. Professor Sycamore would come home late at night, switch on the light and be faced with Beckett, staring from the coat rack. _A chicken? _He'd wake up in the morning and go to switch off his alarm clock, only to come into contact with a pair of talons and a baleful glare. _A chicken? _He'd come out of the shower in the morning Beckett would be on the sink, his eyes huge and empty and furious. _A chicken? _So he'd never said it again, but he still thought of the dignified Beckett as a dear little chicken.

Although, the sight of them sitting apart troubled him… Captured Pokémon, or rather owned Pokémon, were something slightly more than pets or weapons. Really good Pokémon trainers – really effective ones, the ones who were most often victorious in tournaments – had a sort of link with their Pokémon. It was known as psychosymbiosis, although Professor Sycamore preferred to think of it as plain love. It meant that a battling trainer would always have a sort of tie, a mixture of emotional, psychical and physical, to their battling Pokémon, and while injuries sustained by their Pokémon couldn't _hurt_ them, as such, in a different sort of way… it _did_. He'd never understand how professional trainers like Alexis could expend so much energy on so many Pokémon. It was one of the reasons, the most secret and private reason, that he was so interested in Mega Evolution. Mega Evos would make Pokémon tougher in battle, and it wouldn't hurt so much to see them hurt.

The other thing about the link was that it worked in both directions. And while Professor Sycamore was depressed, a spark of vitality had been put out in Vyvy and Beckett. Just thinking about that made him feel awful and selfish and he had to spit the bit of croissant he was eating out of his mouth, because it suddenly tasted ashy.

As was family tradition on Sunday mornings, they went for a long ramble over the fields outside Petit Meaulnes, although they travelled much slower than they used to. They had the two young children, for a start, even with Mimi riding on Armand's back, and a heavily pregnant woman who kept on shouting things like, "Do you think I can pee behind that bush right now?" and, "Wow, this would be a gorgeous place to go into labour!" while her six foot tall, strapping husband fussed around her like a nervous nanny. And then there was Georges, not as young as he used to be and wheezing heavily, the years of pipe-smoking catching up with him.

"Papa," said Professor Sycamore, linking his arm with his father's as they starting strolling up a small hill. Georges had once raced and beaten his children to the top of this hill; now he had to lean on Augustine to keep walking. "Papa, have you thought about swapping the pipe for carrot sticks?"

"Oh, bof, you sound like your mother, Gus," panted Georges, and gave him a weak slap on the arm. A few metres away, Iris and Alexis were walking together, heads bowed, talking seriously. Iris' hair was completely grey and he noticed, with a complicated pang of fraternal love and sadness, that there were strands of grey in Alexis' hair too.

How little time we have to do the things we need to do, he thought.

xxxx

When they eventually got back, it was already lunchtime. Iris insisted on being allowed to cook it herself. "How often do I get to feed you all at once? Let me do it before I start resenting it." There was no fighting a mother's logic.

Professor Sycamore went for a little walk by himself, through the school.

He stopped off high in the east wing, in an old classroom that held the surprising scent of lavender, although he couldn't see any anywhere. It was a small room, with eight desks and a huge blackboard dominating one wall. The light came in through four skylights, set in different corners of the room, so that several of the desks sat in patches of brightness and the central one was in a private gloom.

He sat himself in the gloomy one and stared at the blackboard.

He thought, Lysandre. Because this was what his mind did. When it emptied out of thought, when it had a moment for quiet meditation, in the gaps between words and the breath between phrases, in darkling dusks or slow mornings, it would bring out that name like the beginning of a prayer. Lysandre.

He put his head down on the desk.

Lysandre.

Lysandre, are you going to punish me?

Lysandre, what will you do with the ruler you're holding?

Lysandre, do you think I deserve a beating?

He squeezed his eyes shut and fumbled for his belt.

Lysandre would ask him to stand up, lean forward and place his hands on the desk. He'd run his hand all the way down Professor Sycamore's back, along the spine, and then reach his hand between Professor Sycamore's legs, to squeeze his hardening cock. He'd tap the ruler lightly against the backs of his thighs and say, Do you know what happens when you misbehave, Professor?

As Professor Sycamore swallowed hard, with his mind already racing ahead to the languid cruelty of the spanking Lysandre would administer, his cool low voice saying delicious things over the sound of Professor Sycamore's cries, he suddenly thought, No. Wait.

Lysandre, leaning forward, his hands placed over a desk. His elbows on the desk, his forehead on his hands.

Do you know what happens when you misbehave, mon ami?

The new thought sent a surge of intense pleasure through his cock, and for a few seconds he thought just the image of Lysandre in a submissive position would be enough to make him come, it was so unusual, so attractive. But he brought himself back under control.

Lysandre's broad back bare, a shirt hanging off one arm where he had been incompletely undressed, as Professor Sycamore would be so keen to get his head down. The belt of his trousers undone, an obvious and anxious erection pushing through the unzipped fly. His breathing steady but shallow. His shoulder blades like the wings of a fallen angel, their outline ready to be traced by Professor Sycamore's tongue.

He'd be able to kiss and bite that exposed body at length, revelling in the man's every shudder, excited because he would know that Lysandre could turn around at any moment and overpower him. I've got you now, mon ami. Don't even think of fighting me. You know I've always wanted you. I'll show you just how much it hurt me, mon ami, mon cher, mon amour. Biting hard at the curve of the waist, just above the hipbone, leaving little teethmarks in his skin like a signature, a love note.

Pulling the trousers down, scratching the backs of Lysandre's thighs with his nails. And Lysandre, stoic and well-taught, making no more noise than a quickly drawn breath. Oh, you won't cry out for me? Then let me show you what I can do to make you cry out.

(Professor Sycamore was pulling at himself with freefalling urgency, but he forced himself to slow down. The images were too potent, lining up in his head and firing into his libido like bullets. He felt that deep and aching tingling at the base of his cock, knew that he was too close to coming.)

He'd let his mind switch off and take the ruler to the backs of Lysandre's thighs, and his beautiful arse (mon dieu but what a beautiful arse that man had), leaving shocking red lines. His arm rising and falling, rising and falling (his arm rising and falling, rising and falling), laying into him with frenzied anger and desire (touching himself with frenzied desire and anger). Lysandre biting hard on his lips to keep from crying out, and then making a sort of cross between a growl and a groan, reaching down to free his hard cock and pleasure himself. Ah ah ah, mon cher, you're not allowed to do that until I say you can. Ask me nicely.

Please, Professor…

Plead more. Beg me.

Please Professor, I'm begging you… Lysandre's voice low and level but with a catch in it, somehow much more affecting than a full-throated whimper. Please Professor. I can't take it.

Do you know how long I've had to take it? Take looking at you, longing for you? How much pain it's caused me?

Please, Professor…

You're in my power now, you're in my power and I'll do what I want and I, oh god, and I'll do anything for you, oh god, please, you're everything.

Professor Sycamore dug his nails into the desk as the scenes in his head shifted and changed. Lysandre turning round, knocking the ruler from his hand. Stumbling forward with his trousers around his knees, pushing Professor Sycamore backwards on a desk. Tearing at the Professor clothes with hungry, desperate look in his eyes, like a clawed animal ripping him apart.

Oh, please, Lysandre…

Tell me I'm a monster.

You're a monster, Lysandre, mon monstre, mon amour, mon tueur. I see how hard you're shaking. You're a monster, come and destroy me.

Punish me…

Hurt me…

The knuckles on Professor Sycamore's hand were beating an increasingly frenetic tattoo against the underside of the desk. He couldn't separate, in his head, which voice he wanted saying what. It didn't matter; with a sort of strangled moan he came, cupping his hand around the hot liquid and bashing one of his knees against the desk.

After it was over, he reached into his pocket for a tissue (why hadn't he thought of that before?) and mopped himself up without taking his forehead off the desk.

He realised his cheeks were wet with tears and wondered at what point he'd started crying.

This, he thought, has gone on for too long.

He was amazed at the firmness with which he thought it.

He was, he realised, sick of his desire. He'd expected, at some level, the pain, the torment, the anguish, the longing, the violence, the self-loathing, but what he hadn't expected was the boredom. He was _bored_ of himself. He was bored of the person he'd become. He was bored of going round and round in the same self-immolatory circle, masturbating and crying, crying and masturbating, worshipping from afar and then prostrating himself up close. He was _bored, bored, bored_. And he was exhausted.

"That's it," he said aloud. "That's enough."

When I get to Lumiose City, he thought, I'll speak to Lysandre. I'll say that, in the light of his offer regarding the Geosenge Town project, I feel I have no choice but to end our personal relationship, as it has endangered our professional one. That while I hope that the École Paranormale Superieure and Fleur-de-Lis Labs can continue their mutually beneficial exchange programme, it cannot be through the two of us.

I'll tell him, in short, that I want him gone from my life.

It was, surely, the only thing he could do.


	6. Ice

Venus, now you've returned again

to battles long neglected. Please, oh please, spare me.

- Horace, Book IV, Ode I

Lysandre was working on the final prototype of the Holo Caster, which was due for commercial release within the next six months, when he heard the news of Professor Axe's death. His first thought was, thank Arceus for that.

The old woman had been dogging him like a demonic shadow for almost a year. If the Comte was the opposing king on the chessboard, Professor Axe had been playing some obscure and dangerous game of her own devising, for which only she knew the rules.

She'd summoned him once for coffee, some time ago, and casually revealed the source of Fleur-de-Lis' funding, infuriating and humiliating Lysandre, once he'd had time to turn the meeting over in his mind. He'd never even thought to question where the money, which appeared annually in his trust fund, came from, since wondering that would mean wondering about his father, and he preferred to devote as little mental energy to the Comte as possible. After that, she'd been quiet for a little while, and he thought he'd heard the last of her. After all, she had been a formidable woman some twenty, thirty, forty years ago, but she'd aged. Her time was over.

Then, last autumn, when he'd first started planning the Geosenge Town project, he'd found a note in his private box at Fleur-de-Lis, which was kept in his office. The box functioned as a pigeonhole and was only used by the upper echelon at Fleur-de-Lis, to avoid leading an electronic trail of correspondence – all documents were destroyed after reading. The note was on heavy cream paper and sealed with wax, bearing the signet of a rearing Noivern. It was addressed to 'Lysandre du Feu' in heavy Gothic script. He'd torn it open to read:

_Do try to keep up, Seigneur_.

He'd torn it in half, and then in half again, and then in the blank grip of fury had kept tearing it and tearing it until the message was a nest of twisting shreds in his hands. Then he'd marched all the way to Lab 5, where Xerosic worked, and tossed the remains of the letter into the room.

Xerosic had placidly watched the shreds settled around the room like filthy snow. "Bad news, Lysandre?"

"Who delivered the notes to my office this afternoon?" said Lysandre, keeping his voice dangerously level.

"I did." This came from Celosia, one of Xerosic's hand-picked scientists. She was a sharp, slender woman with tired eyes and a thoughtful smile, plagued by a brain so purely mathematical that Xerosic claimed he'd once seen her transfixed before a hail storm, her face locked in the expression of one harassed by beauty, calculating the speed of the ice plummeting to the earth.

"The note with the Noivern seal, where did it come from?"

Celosia, who was bending over a vat containing a shiny Magikarp, straightened up slowly. "It appeared in my pigeonhole," she said, and without breaking eye contact she pointed to the honeycomb of letterboxes that occupied a far corner of Lab 5.

Lysandre's heart had sunk a little. For reasons of privacy, Lab 5 was not monitored by security cameras. They would not be able to find the original messenger.

He'd launched an internal investigation, but the enquiry was rapidly overshadowed by some other bad news; the department of environmental biology at the university had evacuated Geosenge Town's paltry few residents and set up a quarantine zone. Fleur-de-Lis were denied any sort of access whatsoever.

Xerosic had been amused, in the way that the Ingrand sometimes were when they were extremely angry. He'd met Lysandre for coffee at the Café Lysandre (where they could be guaranteed an unbugged room and the collaboration of the workers) and muttered, "They received some data and an anonymous bloody tip-off that the place is radioactive, or at least biodamaged. They say it's probably nothing but the department have a 'duty' to investigate, even though they don't really understand what they're investigating. It's like Chinese whispers for aresholes up at the École. We're fucking lucky they didn't get the government involved, beyond getting some funding for the evacuation."

"You think that was good luck, do you, mon ami?" Lysandre had said, darkly. He was thinking, Axe wouldn't dream of pulling rank and bending the ear of a politician, but every science department in the university is still in her thrall. Putain!

The town was declared safe, and the quarantine withdrawn, within a fortnight, but it left a bad taste in Lysandre's mouth. He'd redirected the Geosenge project's resources into research; field work would attract too much attention after the quarantine. And after that initial defeat, he started receiving more notes in the private box.

The first few notes were fairly innocuous. They were taunting but unthreatening, often only a few lines long: the title of an archived paper, for example, that was coincidentally the same archived paper that someone on the research team had sent to Lysandre, suggesting that it was 'interesting about rocks' and 'completely unread, no one else knows about it'; or sarcastic summaries of the old sagas dealing with La Guerre des Frères, at a time when the archivist had first brought the legend of Az le Roi to Lysandre's attention.

Certainly it was infuriating to know that the old hag was effortlessly keeping pace with his secret research team, but then again, she didn't seem to be doing anything about the knowledge she was accruing. Besides, it also suggested that there was a spy at Fleur-de-Lis, and that in itself was useful to know.

Then there was the second major set-back in the very early spring – the first Holo Caster prototype had been denied a commercial patent. (Amina, who had been promoted to chief engineer at around the same time, had been angry for days.) At first, Lysandre had put it down to the usual human fear of change, but after a bit of languid prying, he'd discovered, with some shock, that it had been declared 'dangerous' by the beta-testing group.

By Kalosian law, all new technology seeking a commercial patent had to be beta-tested by an autonomous body, separate from the originating company and the government itself. Because the Holo Caster was a complex piece of technology, the beta-testing group had been recruited from external research bodies, other laboratories and, lo and behold, the various engineering departments at the École Paranormale Superieure.

He'd received another note shortly after that:

_I see you, Seigneur. _

_P.S. Do give my very fondest regards to Gus Sycamore._

Lysandre had remembered the other part of the conversation he'd had with Professor Axe, and he'd thought, You old bitch. His very nerve endings had prickled with panic; he felt sure that if he'd looked at his hands, he'd be able to see the bright electric sparks of his synapses snapping on and off, fireworks under the skin. He hated to be outdone. But worse, he was afraid – with a real, turbulent fear – that she would tell Professor Sycamore. About him. About how he felt.

He'd mentally declared war against her.

He'd brought the full force of the family name against the ruling of the beta-testers, and after months of wrangling had succeeded in getting the Holo Caster patented, but he still felt harangued by Professor Axe at every turn. They played a cloak-and-daggers game against one another, characterised by missing documents, overheard conversations, suspicions and suspensions, trickery and deceit. She was an inconvenience, she tried to trip him up at every new success, she was the auditor of his actions, and she was on to him.

What infuriated him the most, really, was the insignificance of her ambitions. He might have respected her as a foe had she been planning some rival project, if she were seeking to harness the suspected powers at Geosenge for her own means. But no, the crazy old bat was just protecting her old department from him. It was so irritatingly _trivial_.

The notes began to get stranger and stranger as the year wore on. _Is this the collision of planets or the grappling of worms?_ one read. _In our isolations, we hear only the echoes of our own convictions_, said another. _Loneliness is martyrdom, but to what twisted and deformed gods,_ said yet another. Or, the strangest one, the one he'd burned before he'd really read it properly, so he'd never be sure if this was exactly what it had said: _If we were only brave enough to say what we felt, we might not suffer and call it a good sacrifice._

Lysandre started to feel peculiarly like Professor Axe was trying to reach out to him. Your senilities and your regrets are none of my concern, he'd thought to himself coldly. Indeed, they work only to my advantage. Though some sub-thought at the back of his mind had whispered, _she hears you / you hear her / she understands you / you understand her_.

Occasionally, she signed off with, _Do give my fondest regards to GS._

During that delirious, awful, wonderful summer, of blackouts and desperation and longing, the notes had tailed off. The Geosenge Town project surged ahead, miraculously unhindered. Lysandre wondered whether her silence was an admission of defeat. It was a strangely melancholic thought.

At the end of the summer, a note – the last note he ever received before her death – appeared in the private box. It was a bizarre string of letters, written on the far right-hand side of a single page.

_Ng6xNg2+ _

He'd thought, ah, the old woman has finally lost her mind (_ah, words are no longer intelligible, I have finally lost my mind_).

He'd put the note in a locked top drawer in his desk and tried not to think about it; its very mysteriousness bothered him almost as much as the veiled threats. It was only through coincidence that he'd unlocked the code, which wasn't a code at all. He was ending a meeting with the scientists in Lab 5 and had noticed a tattoo on the inside of Celosia's wrist. It read, _Qg5xg3#_.

"Celosia," he'd said, "what's that?"

Celosia had stretched her arm out and bent her wrist delicately. "A tattoo," she said, and when Xerosic shot her a warning look, added, "It's a move I used to win a tournament."

"Please explain."

Celosia drew her wrist back into her shirt. "I used to be the Champion of Kalos. The chess champion, that it. This is chess notation for the move that won me the title." She'd looked rather sad, for a moment, but Lysandre had already moved on in his head. He'd dismissed the meeting and went straight to the Lumiose City Public Library, to their chess reference section.

Chess notations, he learned, were usually written in columns: the left-hand side was White's column and the right-hand side was Black's. So the string of letters on his note represented a move from Black. K was King, Q was Queen, B was Bishop, R was Rook and N, somewhat amusingly, was Knight (night! cold and lovely night, secretive night!).

The squares of a chessboard were noted by rank (a to g) and file (1 to 8). A Queen moving forwards three places from b2 would be recorded as b2-b5; a Bishop moving diagonally four spaces from c5 would be recorded as c5-g1. The 'x' in the middle of his piece of notation indicated a capture. The Black Knight had moved from g6 to capture a piece on g2 – specifically, the White Knight – and the '+' at the end of the notation indicated that White was in check.

Lysandre was not a chess expert (as Professor Axe had presumably assumed) but he knew enough about chess to know how a Knight moved. They were the most unpredictable pieces on the board, moving in an 'L' shape, forever turning corners, shifting and elusive. But the notation Professor Axe had given him was an illegal, impossible move. The Black Knight had captured the White Knight by moving in a straight line.

He had no idea what it was supposed to mean.

So the second thought, when he learned of Professor Axe's death, was, What a shame I will never be able to question her about that.

xxxx

The evolutionary biology department held a wake for Professor Axe the following evening, which he attended. The Baron des Aix, Didier, had invited him to the funeral with brusque formality, but Professor Axe's death had left Lysandre feeling like he'd finally been able drop a bag of rocks from his shoulders, a bag he had been carrying uphill for months – he wasn't going to allow himself to be tempted into mourning. Besides, he loathed Didier, whom he regarded as stupid, ugly and pointless, and he wanted very little to do with the Château des Aix, who were known supporters of the Chevaliers de la Flamme.

He wasn't the only member of the aristocracy to forgo the funeral and attend the departmental wake instead. He saw the Duchesse du Caillou, a stony-faced woman of political opinions so old-fashioned they were practically archaeological, who was deliberately attending the wake as a snub to the prodigal des Aix; and he saw the Vicomte d'Éreux, who had studied under Professor Axe and was there in a show of solidarity. Both nodded to him when he entered. He mentally dismissed the Duchesse and watched the Vicomte until he was sure the man's presence was entirely innocent.

"Bon soir. I'm glad you were able to come, Lysandre," said a soft voice near his shoulder.

He glanced down and met the eyes of Professor Fortmaine, who was holding two glasses of wine. She silently handed him one and they kissed politely, each one keeping an eye on the other's expression.

"It seemed only appropriate, Professor," he said coolly. "Her work inspired many of the projects, and I daresay the scientists, working at Fleur-de-Lis. I see that the entire department has turned out in full force. What a remarkable tribute to Professor Axe."

"We are aware that we have lost an irreplaceable colleague," said Professor Fortmaine, matching the coolness of his tone. Her face was unreadable. Lysandre had heard the word 'unreadable' applied to many expressions, but Professor Fortmaine's really was giving nothing away: the syntax of the eyes, the mouth and the brow matched nothing, meant nothing. Lysandre thought, you may be as obscure and watchful as you please, if I can keep ahead of Axe I shall have no trouble eluding you.

"You are searching for someone," she added. It was not a question. It startled him.

In truth, Lysandre had been scanning the room with increasing intensity. It will be useful to know who is attending this wake, he thought, levelly. Softly, secretly, something else in him was saying, _you may as well stop checking, you know he's not here, you can feel his presence in a room without even looking round, he burns like a flame, if he were here you'd know it, you hid your soul inside him, if he were here you'd be able to feel him_.

"I'm surprised that Professor Sycamore is not here," he said, before he could stop himself, and cursed inwardly. The voices weren't normally this hard to control.

"He's off on compassionate leave," said Professor Fortmaine. Her brown wrinkled, a brief crackle of emotion passing over her face before it resumed its icy blankness. "He was the one who found her."

"Ah."

"It was a rather intense day for him," Professor Fortmaine continued. "He appears to have made, eh, rather a leap forward in the Mega Evolution theory as well."

"You mean, he has solved it."

"Potentially."

Lysandre nodded. They stared at each other.

He was thinking, How useful that will be for my research. He was thinking, _you always thought he'd tell you first. How did you never explore that assumption?Why did you think that? Why did you let yourself think that?_

He wondered whether Professor Fortmaine could see the battle raging behind his eyes, but she'd turned her head slightly to greet a colleague.

A wave of complicated anger rose up inside him; he could feel a dark, stinging pain in the back of his throat. He was thinking, _traitor_ and _you thought he…_ and _what did you… _and _he never cared, he must have never cared, why wouldn't he tell you first?_ He had a sudden image of himself kneeling at Professor Sycamore's feet, his hands and ankles tied and a cloth over his mouth, his forehead on Professor Sycamore's thigh. The Professor was stroking his hair and saying in a mocking voice, alors, mon ami, you surely didn't think you were anything more than a passing distraction for me? Have you been deluding yourself all this time?

No, he thought, and _yes, something in you was hopeful, you'd really started to believe in your own fantasies_ and No, I am displeased, I should always have been the one to discover the key to Mega Evolution. _You really thought he cared, you pathetic fool, you'd started to think you could capture him, bring him to Fleur-de-Lis, crown him as the king of your disgusting blackened heart and let him redeem you._

He is a traitor _he is a traitor and you are a fool_.

This was all thought in barely a second, a short howl in his head, a bullet to the brain.

"When did he leave?" he asked Professor Fortmaine, bending to bring his mouth level with her ear.

"Yesterday," she replied, apparently unsurprised by the sudden furtiveness of the conversation. "He's gone back to South Kalos to see his family. He'll be back on Monday, I couldn't persuade him to stay longer, but he's officially on compassionate leave for the rest of the week."

_He could have called in that time_.

"Well, I hope he is coping."

Professor Fortmaine sighed. "Moi aussi."

He straightened up and scanned the room again. He could feel the layers of his mind sliding over one another, like something revolting in a deep sea trench. The coldly thought consciousness would be directing him for the rest of the evening, circulating, making small talk, gathering information. The murky, unintelligible layer beneath that was murmuring to itself with agonised dementia, _do you hate him now / do you hate him / what are you going to do about him / what are you going to do to him._

Black Knight to break White Knight. Check.

xxxx

Hours later, he lay in his bed and let himself be weak. To be more precise, he pulled of his clothes and put his head on the pillow and wrapped his fist round his cock without even berating himself for it. The world was filthy and he was filthy too. Everything had gone wrong.

He felt so bitter and snarled-up inside that he couldn't focus on a proper narrative fantasy. How odd, to realise now that he'd been telling himself hopeful stories through all this fantasy fucking.

Instead he had a sort of collage of images in his head. He was digging his fingers between the gaps in Professor Sycamore's ribs, leaving fingertip bruises; he bit Professor Sycamore's smooth, trembling skin with especial and sadistic care, tiny cruel bites, marking him with a blossoming of red marks; he left the signs of damage on Professor Sycamore's body like dark stars on a bright sky, sweet and tender pain, the universe in reverse.

_Is that really the image that you want to make you come?_

Lysandre took a sharp breath in and pulled his hand back. His cock twitched, aching, and he forced himself to cross his wrists above his head.

Tant pis. Violence without sex was too violent (even if he felt a sort of relief, imagining himself punishing the Professor). Maybe something else, then. Maybe he could just let himself indulge in a little masochism, imagine Professor Sycamore mocking him, making him crawl naked across the room with a rose in his teeth and a blindfold over his eyes, to the sound of bells.

Mon dieu, thought Lysandre, where did that one come from?

Professor Sycamore, tying his ankles to a chair, murmuring, "This is just a little experiment, mon ami, I'm sure you understand," performing an impromptu striptease in front of him, stopping to laugh and laugh when he saw the bulge in Lysandre's trousers, oh you _are_ funny, mon ami, you're slavering over me, oh, très drôle!

No, thought Lysandre sharply.

He threw himself upright and climbed angrily out of bed. His erection thwacked grotesquely against his leg as he strode towards the wardrobe; he ignored it and started to dress. Rage made him clumsy and he tore a button off his shirt as he tried to push it through a buttonhole. Never mind, he thought, I can buy a hundred more. It is all so immaterial.

He pulled on a coat and left his private apartments by the back door.

The cold evening air slapped him with vigorous efficiency and he felt his spine start to unstiffen. The sky was thick with clouds and reflected the hellish orange glow of the streetlights – Lumiose City, ordinarily so beautiful, suddenly looked like a city of the damned to Lysandre. He started walking fast with no particular desire to get anywhere. He just didn't want to be alone in his apartment with the voices.

It started to rain, in misty depressing droplets that barely had the dignity of rain. The weather was a vapour.

Lysandre had been walking aimlessly for about half an hour, skulking under the stupid raindrops, when he saw a familiar figure coming towards him.

"Amina?"

The figure stopped for a moment and swayed gracefully. "Lysandre? What are you doing out?"

She swanned up to him and gave him two lingering kisses on each cheek.

Lysandre felt his heart lifting slightly, relieved. "Amina, you're drunk."

"Ah, no no no, monsieur, I am tipsy. And I deserve to be, quite frankly. Where have you been this evening?"

"Professor Axe's wake," said Lysandre.

"Ah." Amina blinked slowly. "Of course."

Her face clouded over and for a moment she was preoccupied with her own thoughts, giving Lysandre a chance to scrutinise her properly. She'd dusted gold over her eyelids and was wearing a gold clip in her hair; her mouth looked like a dessert from where she'd applied pinkish lipgloss. Her clothes were dressier than usual too – Amina was ordinarily a tailored shirt and slacks sort of woman, but when she dressed up, she looked like a cross between a fashion plate and a classical painting.

"It's Sunday," he said suddenly. "You had a date."

Amina pulled herself out of whatever chasm of thought she'd fallen into and gave him a confused smile. "Oh? Oh yes! Yes. That's where I've been. Yes. That's why I'm tipsy."

"Was it all that bad?" asked Lysandre, teasingly. This is fine, he thought. This is good. I shall have some normal human interaction with Amina.

Amina rolled her eyes. "Walk with me," she said, faux-imperious, and took him by the arm. They started walking back in the direction Lysandre had come from, arm in arm.

They moved at a leisurely stroll along the streets, which were emptying quickly as the night drew in and the rain continued. Amina absentmindedly stretched out a hand to test for droplets even as they beaded on her coat, leaving her looking like she was encased in silvery armour.

"Well?" Lysandre prompted. "Can I assume that you will not be seeing your beau again?"

"I will not," said Amina mildly.

"Was he especially obnoxious?"

"Oh, not especially," said Amina, her voice dreamy. "Actually, we had a very nice date. He likes all the rights things and dislikes all the right things and laughed at my jokes. It's just that, after we'd started on the second bottle of wine, he admitted that he found me terribly attractive, and that he just thought women like me were always so beautiful."

Lysandre frowned. "Women like you? Engineers?"

Amina threw her head back and cackled. "No. Black women."

"Oh." Lysandre was grateful for the darkness. He could feel the tips of his ears turning red. Amina gave him a sideways, affectionate glance.

"It's a credit to you, really, that 'engineer' was the first thing you thought," she added.

"What a crass and stupid thing to say," said Lysandre, still blushing. "I hope you left immediately."

"No, I didn't leave for another twenty minutes, but that's because I was lecturing him," Amina replied. He heard her crack her knuckles in a satisfied manner.

Amina had been promoted to chief engineer because she'd essentially solved the Holo Caster problems and made the thing workable. She was more than capable, she was supremely talented. He'd given her a pay rise and a seat on the executive table, which she'd accepted graciously, and when he'd asked her if there was anything else he could do to reward her for her hard work at Fleur-de-Lis, she'd said, "Take me out to dinner."

He did one better; he took her to Café Lysandre and took over the kitchen. The chefs were on their best behaviour, their nerves strung out, working around him, while he peacefully cooked a little meal for two on one of the spare hobs. Amina had perched herself on a stool in the kitchen (a wild inconvenience for the kitchen staff, but they didn't dare say anything) and made comments like, "I think you're cutting that wrong," and, "Call that a sauce? I call that a liquid in distress." It had been a very pleasant evening. They'd eaten at a little corner table and managed to get through two bottles of wine. It was one happy beacon in a time when he was in almost permanent mental distress. He'd wondered, and he still did, whether he would have been a happier child and a happier person if he'd had a sister when he was growing up.

"Stop," said Amina suddenly, now. She pulled her arm from his, irritated, and bent to scrabble at her shoes.

"Never reincarnate as a woman, Lysandre," she said indistinctly. "The tits are fun but high heels are murder."

"Men can wear heels if they want," said Lysandre absentmindedly. "What are you doing?"

"Taking these off." Amina stepped out of her shoes and crowed. She was barefoot.

Lysandre was horrified. "Amina! The pavement is filthy. Stop being so ridiculous!"

Amina tripped elegantly away from him, chuckling to herself. In the rain she was like a lovely phantom, and she turned and looked at his expression and laughed, giddy and happy.

Lysandre was painfully reminded of another rainstorm, an April shower earlier that year. He'd been walking with Professor Sycamore when a downpour had hit, sudden and stunning. The streets had emptied as people fled for shop doorways and covered arcades. He had instinctively hunched against the torrent and made to move into a sheltered place, but Professor Sycamore had calmly held up a hand.

"You know, Lysandre," he'd called over the sound of the rain, "once you resign yourself to the idea of getting wet, it's actually rather wonderful. What's a little rain between friends!"

Lysandre had watched, with despair and adoration, as that strange man had tipped his head back and let the rain drench his face. His thick black curls unravelled in the water; individual droplets hung, momentarily, on his long lashes. He'd ambled ahead of Lysandre, who stood frozen with surprise, and jumped into a puddle like a young boy playing.

"Come on!" he called, turning back, his face holding the same giddy laughter that Amina's held now. And for a fraction of a second he'd appeared to be holding out his hand for Lysandre's. Lysandre, who had spent months successfully containing the voices, felt himself think, _yes, now, this is it, this is it_ and had almost reached out to take the outstretched hand, and he would have kissed it, or used it to pull the Professor into his arms _at last, at last, at last. _But he managed to restrain himself, thank Arceus, and what had briefly looked like a hand held out was actually a hand going towards the hair, to hook a loop behind Professor Sycamore's ear.

He remembered that and he remembered, too, that Professor Sycamore had summarily dismissed him without a second thought, that he was a traitor, that he thought nothing of Lysandre, nothing at all. He felt the icy rage again, and for a moment his heart contorted with hate.

He certainly couldn't bear to watch Amina unknowingly mimic the Professor. He strode over to her and picked her up.

Amina wasn't the sort of woman to squeal. She made a surprised 'hf' when he lifted her, then relaxed into him and draped one arm around his neck.

"My hero," she said drily.

"You can't walk barefoot in the rain," he told her, and started to walk with her in his arms. "You're not some kind of countryside nymphette and this isn't a romance novel."

"Too, too cruel," murmured Amina, smiling at him.

After about ten minutes of walking in this fashion, Amina said, "Alright, you've made your point. Put me down."

"No."

"Now who's being ridiculous?" She shifted in his arms. "Where are we going?"

"My apartments." This hadn't occurred to him until she asked, but it seemed as good a destination as any.

He carried her up the stairs to the private entrance, and didn't put her down until he was sure her feet were touching carpet.

Amina took in the passageway. It was softly lit by ceiling brackets, designed by an award-winning metalworker who also made the medal for the Kalos Champion, Diantha. An alcove held a sculpture by an Ingrand artist, which Lysandre had bought when the artist was still living, half-starving, in a garret in Ingrando's smoky capital city and was now worth as much as some of the houses in the poorer part of town. The carpet was thick and dark and soft.

"Nice place you've got here," she remarked with a sniff, then gave him a wicked grin. "Where's Théo?"

"Through there. There's seats in there too. Why don't you go in and sit down and reflect on your sins."

"Can I have a drink with my sins?"

Lysandre gave her a frown. "I don't think you need any more to drink."

"Don't patronise me. Make mine a whiskey." She swept off and Lysandre smiled to himself.

He did, in fact, have whiskey, and although he didn't drink spirits very often, he always made sure that, when he did, he only drank the best. He poured two glasses and went to join Amina in the drawing room. She was sat on the chaise longue. The Litleo was at her feet, his paws in the air, having his tummy tickled.

"Salut, bonhomme," she cooed at him. "Petit, petit, petit."

"Don't spoil him," said Lysandre, who did precisely this sort of thing all the time. He sat down next to Amina and gave the Litleo an affectionate nudge with his foot. Théo purred, then blinked, pounced on the foot, looked frankly surprised at his own actions and raced off to sit on a chair. Amina laughed and took her glass from Lysandre.

"I never thought I'd see the inside of your apartment," she said conversationally.

"I never thought I'd have to carry you because you were insisting on walking barefoot through the streets. Life is full of surprises."

She snorted and took a sip of the whiskey, her eyes skittering over the walls of the room.

"No photos," she observed.

"What would have I have photos of?"

"Your friends. Your family."

"I don't have much in the way of family."

"Oh, come now," said Amina impatiently. "You're an aristocrat, in fact I believe I am right in saying that you will eventually inherit the title of Comte de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt. You must have family all over the place. The de la Massénas? The du Feu-Calincourts? Any of the other fiefdoms you've absorbed over the years?"

Lysandre looked reflectively into his glass. "Actually, the 'du Feu' was an honorary title presented to the family a few hundred years ago. An ancestor fought particularly brutally in a war for the King of the time. They called him the Comte of Scorched Earth; he destroyed everything and everyone that got in his way."

"Sounds familiar," said Amina, with a dryness that was lost on Lysandre until the next day. "Alright, so maybe you don't speak to your distant cousins. Brothers? Sisters?"

"I'm an only child."

"Lucky you," said Amina. "I'm one of three. Two older brothers, rascals from their eyebrows to their ankles."

For some reason, the light, easy warmth with which she spoke of her brothers both hurt and touched Lysandre. He put his glass on the table with care and said, "I would have liked a sister."

He felt Amina gazing at him. "Were you lonely, growing up?" she asked.

"Not until I was a teenager," he said. "I was allowed to play with the children in the local village before then. After that, well." He sighed.

"After that?" Amina said.

"After that, yes, I suppose it was lonely."

"Oh, Lysandre. When did it stop?"

Lysandre looked at her and held her eyes for the space of two heartbeats. "Stop?" he repeated, softly.

"Oh. Lysandre."

He knew what was going to happen before it happened. Amina's beautiful face was lit with a mysterious inner light, like a candle flame in a bell jar. The expression she wore was almost pained, and he knew, in the moment, exactly how she felt – he knew what that pain was like. That was why (he told himself, afterwards) when she leaned forwards and kissed him slowly, lingeringly, on his cheekbone, he didn't move away. He touched her shoulder with one hand. Maybe he'd meant to stop her with that, but he'd touched her so softly it was almost like a response, an affirmation.

The next kiss was lower down, at the corner of his mouth. He didn't move, but when she drew back to look at his face, he closed his eyes.

The next kiss was on his lips.

He let her kiss him, his eyes still shut, neither responding nor pulling back. But when she lifted her arms and put them around his neck, her long fingers caressing the line of his throat with an almost unbearable gentleness, he thought, _oh god, I've been so lonely_ and he put his arms around her and pushed her backwards.

They kept kissing and kissing until Lysandre started to forget her face, and his, and thought that the world, for now, only existed in the gap of breaths that they shared. He felt light-headed and a little wild, but he wasn't thinking anything except single isolated words, like 'honey' and 'space' and 'glissando'. He was vaguely aware of his arms and hands doing things but they felt almost beyond his control. He felt her long fingers at his collar, on his shoulders, tugging off his shirt.

Then, under his mouth, Amina giggled.

He pulled back sharply and stared at her. Amina wasn't a giggler. The world started to reinstate itself, like a daguerreotype developing.

Amina gave him a breathless smile. "Sorry, I…" She sat up. Her face was almost too happy to bear looking at. He'd pulled her dress down to her waist – when had he done that? – and now she sat topless, her small breasts looking terribly vulnerable and sweet.

"What is it?" he said, and was aware of how hollow his voice sounded.

"It's, um," Amina grinned, "it's Théo."

Lysandre twisted to look round. The Litleo was sitting very upright in his chair, staring at them with an expression of faint concern, as if they were juggling knives and he expected to have to step in and help one of them staunch the bleeding at any moment.

Amina shifted closer. She was shivering a little, and she touched his arm very shyly. He looked back at her. Her heart was beating so hard that he could see it flickering in the gap between her breasts. He felt a surge of practically brotherly affection for her. Amina, dear, he thought, don't be nervous, we can put our clothes on and listen to some music and talk about boys, if you like. He laid his hand over the flickering heartbeat and she gasped, covered his hand with hers and held it there.

"Should we move into the bedroom?" she whispered.

No, Lysandre wanted to say, no, je suis desolé, I think you've misunderstood. But then he thought, am I actually going to tell her that? Am I actually going to say, I know I'm touching your breasts but I'm doing it in a friendly way, I mean this platonically. Then, in a harder thought, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. It is best to keep her on side; she's your best engineer.

So for the second time that night he picked her up, and carried her into the bedroom.

He flung her down on the bed and he didn't switch the light on.

The night seemed changed, dark and hysterical, as soon as she hit the mattress. He fell on her with an automatic hunger, taking her slender body in his arms. She was like a bending twig in a high wind, she moved against him with graceful agitation. He almost stopped, then, disturbed by the faint cry she made when he pressed his mouth against her collarbone, but then the hard thoughts said, Do your duty like a man, and he kept on.

Later on, when he was inside her, he was grateful for the comparative quiet of her pleasure. Her breath was ragged and her nails scrabbled at his back but she didn't wail or shriek, as he had been afraid she would. She did say his name once, in a tone of voice that made him harder and made tears spring to his eyes, because _it was the wrong voice_, and he had to bury his face in her neck and push roughly into her, so that she wouldn't notice and so that he could stop noticing.

And when he felt the fever of climax coming over him, and he sped up and held her down and felt her tightening around him like a night-closing flower, as she started to make soft and frightening noises and he felt a low groan in the back of his throat, he nevertheless thought firmly, Do your duty like a man, and derived some satisfaction from that.

And while they were locked together, moving together, the sub-thoughts kept up a faint litany of, _tell her you're sorry tell her you're sorry you've done an awful thing tell her you're sorry get on your knees and beg for forgiveness you've done an awful awful thing…_

xxxx

He woke the next morning to find her propped up on one elbow, looking at him with lazy calm. The room was hot; he was unused, these days, to sharing body heat with anyone else, and they'd apparently flung the covers off their bodies in the middle of the night.

"Bonjour," said Amina conversationally. She looked like a reclining queen. "Did you know that you snore? Somehow I'd always imagined you being more refined." She nudged him gently with her knee and grinned.

A little daylight inched into the room through a gap in the curtains, and it was enough to illuminate what felt increasingly, to Lysandre, like a crime scene. His body, so close to Amina's, looked absurd and brutal and pornographic, in a way that her blithe nakedness did not. He felt a sudden disgust for both of them, for what they'd done.

Amina settled back on the pillow and ran her hand down his chest, pulling gently at the chest hair. "How awake are you feeling?" she murmured, and let her hand drop lower.

Lysandre shoved her away and sat upright. Then he dragged his fingers through his hair and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, so that he was facing away from her with his feet on the ground.

"You have to leave," he said flatly.

A few moments silence behind him, then, frostily, "Excuse me?"

"You have to leave," he repeated. Then, as if it has only just occurred to him, "My apologies about last night."

"Your apologies," she repeated.

"Yes. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding."

He felt the mattress shift as Amina slid off the bed and heard her padding round to face him. Presently she was standing in front of him, still naked, and regarding him with a cold, ironic expression. She had one hand on her hip and seemed to be considering something.

Then she drew one hand back and slapped him, hard, around the face.

"You fucking bastard," she said.

Lysandre tested his mouth with his fingers thoughtfully. She'd managed to split his lip; he could taste blood on the tip of his tongue.

"You _fucking cunt._" Amina's voice cracked. "You _piece of shit fucking bastard cunt_."

"Amina," he said reprovingly. She had started to cry, furiously, wiping the tears away with the back of her hand.

"Don't think I'm fucking crying because I'm heartbroken over you," she said hoarsely, through the tears. "I'm fucking crying because I'm so fucking angry. What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you think this was a private work meeting? Were you going to _fucking dismiss me_?"

"Nonsense," said Lysandre. He could feel the hard thoughts taking over, solidifying reassuringly around his mind. It was like being comfortingly encased in a block of ice: cold, still, dignified, certain.

Amina had started to aggressively jump into her clothes, still crying and cursing.

"Con! Putain! And what's your excuse, con? That a one night stand with the boss is written into everyone's contracts?"

"Amina," he said again, his voice cool, "I think you're overreacting. We made a mistake. Now let's move on."

"It wasn't a fucking mistake to me," she snarled. She'd put her dress on inside out but Lysandre didn't think it was the right time to remark on this. Then she stopped, and gave a little sob, and said more quietly, "It wasn't a mistake to me."

He waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, he said, "Of course, I can understand why you're upset…"

"Oh you can, can you?" Amina shouted. "Well! That's very fucking interesting! Where would you like to start? Would you like to start with the humping and dumping? I've been spat on with more politeness, you piece of shit. Or perhaps you'd like to talk about the way you promoted me as a sop to my pride but kept the whole issue of Fleur-de-Lis' funding secret from me. Oh yes, I know all about that," she added, with furious triumph, seeing the briefly startled look on Lysandre's face. "I've known about the Chevaliers de la Flamme for months now. Those fucking terrorists."

Lysandre felt slightly off-balance for a moment. "How did you- why didn't you say something?"

"What the fuck was I supposed to say? 'Hey boss, I hear an incredibly corrupt bunch of power-hungry, pea-brained bastards are paying for my mortgage and my addiction to pumpkin lattes, can we talk about that? Can we talk about how your good work is funded by bullying, coercion, bribery and suppression?'"

"Why didn't you say something?" asked Lysandre again.

"Because I lo- because. Because. _I don't fucking know_. I fucking didn't. Because there's such a thing as loyalty. Because," and now she was crying properly, her shoulders slumped and defeated, "because I couldn't bear to let you think that you were in the wrong."

He sighed and rubbed his face. He was still naked, he realised distantly. Stay naked, said his cold thoughts, you know how she feels about your body, it will give you the advantage.

_Tell her you're sorry. That you can never be sorry enough. Tell her the truth._

"Amina, I can see that we have some, ah, professional difficulties to resolve-"

Amina drew her breath in sharply. The shock of his statement had made her stop crying.

"Professional difficulties?" she echoed. "Well, let me clear that one up for you right now. I resign."

"Don't be foolish."

"_I said I fucking resign._"

Lysandre shook his head. "I'll believe that you said that in the heat of the moment. I'm sure you wouldn't want to abandon the Holo Caster at this stage. Besides, you are due quite a lot of paid leave. Shall we say that you are… on sabbatical for a little while? On full pay, of course."

He pushed the gibbering sub-thoughts under and felt the blissful ice enter his mind. It's not so hard after all, he thought, to destroy a friend. It's not as painful as I'd thought it would. It's not so bad.

"You're a piece of shit," said Amina tonelessly. "Are you a psychopath? I really can't tell. Do you have any feelings at all?"

For one horrible, schizophrenic moment, he was seized with the desire to prostrate himself in front of her and admit everything, everything from his terrible, bitter loneliness, to the scars on his legs, to the murderous sleepwalking, to his enslavement to a whimsical academic with a head full of black curls, to his notes from Professor Axe, to his relationship with his father, to the voices in his head, to the world as he saw it every day, stained and failing and in need of a saviour. But it passed, thank Arceus, it passed.

"Don't answer," Amina said. "Don't speak to me. Stay away from me."

"I'll ask HR to sort out the paperwork for your sabbatical. Now. Would you like me to call you a taxi?"

"I can call my own fucking taxi." She turned, as stiff as a machine, to leave, but stopped at the bedroom door and turned to look back at him.

There was so much in her face that Lysandre had to look away. It was too complex, too intense. She said his name, softly, once, almost as a question to herself, and then she was gone.

The air seemed to settle and grow dull.

He lasted ten minutes, gazing vaguely off at nothing, until his legs, of their own volition, forced him upright and propelled him towards the back door of the apartment. His arm, which was in no way connected to his brain, flung the door open.

"Amina," he said to the figure outside the door, who was not Amina.

It was a man, probably, dressed in the crisp livery of the Château de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt. He was holding a plain white envelope, stamped with the Comte's crest. Lysandre realised that he was dressed in exactly nothing.

"Seigneur," said the liveried apparition, clicking his heels and ostentatiously making eye contact only. "I have been instructed to pass on this message." He handed Lysandre the envelope. "You must return immediately."

Lysandre had the wherewithal to notice 'return', as if his absence from his family's estates had been a mere holiday, but then he read the note, and he realised yes, yes, oh mon dieu, oh the filth of the world, I have to return immediately.


	7. Dark

Professor Sycamore was on the train back to Lumiose City at two o'clock. This was exactly the time he'd planned to leave; he'd told his family that he was going after breakfast, and let the two-hour-long farewells wash over him.

The journey home was ugly and unexceptional. The sky was a strange mushroomy grey, thick and low with clouds, rendering the hours of daylight almost permanently half-lit. There didn't seem to be light so much as a flat internal illumination emanating from all things, so that everything and everyone felt inward-turning and unwelcoming.

It felt awful to be leaving his family – far more awful than it normally did – but he had started to feel like he was tainting everything he touched. _I'm sorry I'm so depressing_, he'd wanted to say. _I'm sorry I'm not getting better even though you're trying to help. _

Fizz had burst into tears when Professor Sycamore first said goodbye, and practically everyone else had followed suit, especially Georges. "I'm just a sentimental old man," he'd gulped, the tears running off his moustache. "It's like you're eighteen again and leaving the nest for the first time!"

"Ah, Papa," said Alexis, "but wouldn't that be wonderful, we'd all be more than a decade younger and we'd know all the lottery numbers."

Georges hadn't responded; he had been too busy boo-hooing into his wife's shoulder.

Armand and Alexis had taken it in turns to corner him alone during the lengthy packing process (Iris had wanted to make him a packed lunch, and she had busied herself doing things like scraping the seeds out of individual grapes and laying the cress out in patterns on the sandwich. "I'll just be a few more moments! Why don't you sit down and have a cup of coffee? You can always get the next train!").

Armand had said, "Call me anytime. Any time of the day. Email me. Use telepathy. Smoke signals. Send Beckett with a message round his neck."

"Ah, that would infuriate him, perhaps I'll do that," said Professor Sycamore, but his heart wasn't in it.

Armand had smiled his sad smile, had said, "Anything. If you ever need to talk, Gus… about _anything_…" Words had failed him at that point, and he'd pulled his brother into a long hug. They stood there without saying anything for several minutes. Professor Sycamore had felt his heart scarring over, wanted to say, "Armand, you're a watchmaker, you've got the hands for delicate work, do you think you could remove whatever this feeling is, lodged in my heart like a shard of glass?"

Alexis had caught him in the passageway between the house and the school, as he was bringing his bag down. Her expression was almost identical to Armand's and, for the first time, Professor Sycamore wondered if this was how outsiders saw the family: each one a fragment of the whole, versions of one another, loving and worrying in perfect tandem. That thought had made him feel even lower, because it occurred to him that, in his misery, he'd broken off from the chain.

"Don't," he'd said.

"Don't want, brother? Don't tell you I love you? Don't tell you that we want to help you?" She shrugged. "Alright, since that seems to hurt you more. I'll tell you to watch your back, instead. Oh, don't look so surprised," she'd added. "I've known you since you were too small to know how to lie. I know when you're feeling hunted."

She'd stood aside to let him pass.

It had been awful, knowing that they all knew something was wrong, knowing that they'd never be able to work out what, knowing that they'd drive themselves to distraction trying to help him despite it.

At the door, at the absolute and final furlough of farewells, Aurelia had sniffled copiously, made him promise to be back within the month.

"If I have this baby and you're not here," she'd choked, "I'm gonna tell him that his Uncle Gus has _herpes_."

"Lia!" snapped Iris.

"Be there for my baby, or I'll train it up to attack you," Aurelia continued, snivelling and dabbing, maiden-like, at her cheeks with her handkerchief. "Be there for my baby or I'll send you the placenta in the post."

"She'll do it," said Luc solemnly.

"I promise I'll be back home before you have your baby," said Professor Sycamore soothingly, although in truth he could hardly visualise himself living into the next day, let alone a month from now. It was a dull shock to him, every morning in Lumiose City, drawing himself out from the dense hollows of unconsciousness, thinking _Lysandre _with routine despair, opening his eyes and realising the world had gone on turning without him, that he'd have to go on living with it now he was awake.

Aurelia gave him a ferocious kiss. "I believe you," she hissed in his ear, suddenly all steel, "and I believe _in_ you too. Be safe, Gus."

And now the train's wheels bore him inexorably back to Lumiose City.

He turned away from the disheartening view from the window and tried to take stock of himself. I am going to make things better, he thought. I refuse to be this soggy depressed lump for any longer. (I wish thinking that made me feel better.) I am going to sort things out when I get back to Lumiose. I'm sure it will make sense to Lysandre, if I simply end our practically-abortive friendship. After all, I have the Mega Evolution experiments to concentrate on…

It occurred to him for the first time, with a nauseous wave of shock and disappointment, that he hadn't had the chance to tell Lysandre about his paltry victory.

I always imagined that he'd been there when it happened, thought Professor Sycamore, sinking deeper into his chair. That maybe, in the moment that the algorithm redeemed itself, or the simulator ran perfect line of code, he'd grab my hand and some understanding would pass between us. He'd meet my eye and I'd meet his and for a moment the world would be balanced, still, perfect.

Oh, merde, who am I kidding, I imagined that he'd sweep my paperwork off the desk, throw me on the table, bite me on the mouth and remind me how it felt to be alive. Now, he'll just hear about the Mego Evo discovery through the usual École channels. And he'll be able to consign me to the 'useful/used' pile.

At least, Professor Sycamore thought with sudden acrimony, at least that makes ending our relationship easier.

For a few minutes, the words 'ending our relationship' echoed back and forth through his head. Then, without quite knowing why he was doing it, he pulled out his phone, scrolled through his contacts and called Marie.

She picked up with a soft, "Salut, Gus," which confused him for a moment, as if he had only be imagining that he'd call her and now here, suddenly, she was.

"Is everything alright?" she asked, when he didn't say anything.

Professor Sycamore took a deep breath. "Marie, can you come and meet me this evening?"

There was a silence at the other end of the line. Then Marie said, her voice carefully toneless, "Why?"

Professor Sycamore felt like a stupid child caught lying. Marie's normal reaction would be innuendo and refusal ("So busy, mon cher"), or innuendo and acceptance, because her normal reaction was the normal response to Professor Sycamore's 'can you come and see me this evening?' There was obviously something in the harmonics of his voice that had alerted her, and now she knew what was coming. He wondered, once again, whether he left clues in his actions or his words when he was around Lysandre, whether this was why Lysandre kept him coolly at arm's length, tolerating his behaviour but ultimately displeased by his presence.

"I need to speak to you," he said.

Marie was silent again. Then she sighed – not a deep and exasperated one, as he would deserve, but a slow, gentle, heartfelt sigh.

"Just tell me now, Gus," she said.

He hunkered down even lower in his chair, too ashamed to even risk making eye contact with anyone else. "I- I'd rather talk about this in person."

"No. Because I know what you're going to say. I want you to get it over with."

"Marie, I think I'd feel more comfortable if you and I sat down-"

"Well, I wouldn't. So say it, Gus. Stop torturing me."

Professor Sycamore dug his thumbnail into the tender bit of flesh where his jaw met his throat. Torture? he wanted to shout at her. You think this is torture? You couldn't even begin to understand what torture is! You think it hurts your heart to have someone you've been casually sleeping with break up with you? You should try living with that heart in a permanent state of pain, like a migraine of the soul, a malaise of desire, mon dieu. You should try wanting someone so much that you see them everywhere, out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn towards them you discover it's someone else, some stranger, some imbecile you don't care about, then you feel rejected afresh, every time. Every time your heart lifts and then sinks even the smallest bit it's like replaying the first moment you fell for them and knew they'd never get any closer to you. Every time, for eternity.

But he also remembered how, sometimes, after sex, when they were lying side by side and she was drowsy and content, Marie would take his hand and tuck it between her breasts and hold it there like something precious and cared-for, and how sometimes, when she lay with her back to him, she'd lift her hair to expose the back of her neck for him, so he could press the curve of his cheek against her nape while he slept without getting a mouthful of fine dark brown strands. Once upon a time, in another life, a better and happier life, Professor Sycamore would have been very happy with her.

So he said. "Alright. I'm sorry. I wanted to do this properly, for you. But if you'd really rather-"

"Yes. I would prefer it this way. I don't need you to see me cry. I don't particularly want to cry. If we can do this without you in front of me, it would probably be easier for me."

"Marie –"

"You're so pretty, you know. That's the worst thing. How pretty you are."

Professor Sycamore picked anxiously at a loose thread on his shirt. "Marie, you don't even know what I'm going to say to you."

"I can guess," she said, her voice very soft. "Say it, Gus. Get it out. Be a man about it."

He took a deep breath. "Marie," he said, his voice as kind as he could make it, "I don't think we should see each other anymore."

"You're in a bad place," said Marie, dully. "You need some space. You have to sort things out in your head."

Merde, thought Professor Sycamore, it's true, these excuses are so clichéd. "It's not- I mean it _is_ that, but it's not just that-"

"It's not me, it's you."

"Marie, I'm sorry, but it really is me. It's me. I'm a problem. I'm the very worst of problems, I'm," he gave a shuddering breath, realised he was on the verge of weeping himself, "I'm awful, I'm so sorry I came into your life and made a mess, I'm sorry I'm the way I am,", I'm so sorry I have to be this way, I'm sorry I'm such a disgusting emotional cripple, a creep at your door, a filthy pilgrim before the angel, I'm so sorry Lysandre, I'm so sorry.

There was silence at the other end of the phone, and it went on for a long time. It took Professor Sycamore a few seconds to realise that Marie, with great dignity and restraint, was crying. He asked her whether she was ok and then wanted to kick himself for asking such an asinine question.

"Oh, I'm fine," she said, her voice clogged with tears. "It's just another bullshit day in Heartbreak City."

xxxx

It was already dark by the time the train pulled in to Lumiose Central Station, and the night was as overcast as the day. The sky looked like it was filled with clouds of smoke, hanging still above the buildings with mutinous intent. Lumiose City was like a mountainside town before the explosion of a volcano – a pervasive sense of doom filled the air like falling ash. As Professor Sycamore stepped off the train, he heard a low grumble of thunder in the air, just before the heavens opened.

Putain, he thought, that's the welcome I get, I suppose.

Professor Sycamore knew he should head straight home, throw the contents of his bag in the laundry basket, let Vyvy and Beckett out of their Pokéballs, feed the three of them, read a little and dive into the deadness of sleep as fast as he could, but some masochistic desire to poke at his wounds drove him towards the evolutionary biology department at the École. He wanted to visit his offices and find the evidence that Lysandre had been there, in his official role as the head of Fleur-de-Lis, gravely congratulating Harjeet and Pierre while Bryony stood exactly halfway between them, proudly part of both institutions.

It was about half past eight in the evening but lights were still burning in the department, shimmering invitingly through the downpour. Most of the staff and students kept odd hours; the clock was merely a pleasingly symmetrical piece of furniture. Professor Sycamore could see a graduate student hurrying towards the Senior Common Room, a couple of faculty members sharing a cigarette out of an open window, cupping their hands around the lit end to protect it from the rain. The blinds were drawn in Professor Fortmaine's office on the top floor, but squinting upwards, he could see an agitated silhouette, flickering and changing as the androgynous academic paced up and down in front of a desk light. In one of the basement laboratories, he thought he saw two young undergraduates kissing passionately, one pressing the other against wall, but he looked away, stung with a mixture of envy and sadness.

He let himself in to his office without switching on the light. While he'd been gone, Harjeet had conscientiously tided his papers. He saw, on Pierre's desk, a part-signed congratulations card with a post-it affixed to it: 'Prof S cracked Mega Evos! Sign card & pass round dept. Pls return to Harjeet or Pierre by Friday.'

Of course, he thought gloomily, I'm off on compassionate leave for another week. I'll have nothing to keep me company but my own bad mood.

He stood in the darkness for a little while, listening to the sound of nothing happening. He thought, if he listened really carefully, he could hear his heart fragmenting a little more.

He heard footsteps approaching and though, merde, I'd better turn on the light or they'll really think I'm going mad.

Panic is never conducive to action. The few steps into the centre of the shared office somehow turned into an obstacle course in the seconds it took Professor Sycamore to turn around, stagger, trip over a catch in the carpet, bash his hip into one of Bryony's abandoned computer projects, swear furiously, straighten up, stumble over to the open door and hit the switch beside it. In the meantime, the approaching footsteps had stopped and a figure stood in the doorway.

The fluorescent lights crackled sheepishly into life and illuminated Lysandre.

"You," Professor Sycamore said, dumbly.

Lysandre took a step into the office and Professor Sycamore, confused and a little frightened by his expression, took several steps back.

"Professor Fortmaine said you'd only be gone for the weekend," said Lysandre, his voice robotic. "I thought you'd be here."

He took another step into the room. His eyes were unseeing, they seemed to be focused on a point some several metres behind Professor Sycamore's head.

"Checking on your discovery," Lysandre continued, and Professor Sycamore noticed the edge in his voice.

"Oh, yes, you heard," he said faintly. "Yes, thank you, it's wonderful news." (Why am I thanking him? He didn't congratulate me. Oh god, I am the worst sort of affable imbecile, no wonder he finds me so pathetic.) "Mon ami, is that why you– what are you doing here?"

He felt like a cornered animal, and he was afraid he'd do something animalistic, like scream or scratch Lysandre's face with his nails. After spending a weekend readying himself to cut the threads that bound him to the man (even though it would feel like cutting arteries or cutting lifelines), the sight of Lysandre actually standing before him was like an electric shock. He felt a deep pain in his chest, which seemed to be coming from the very bones in his ribcage, and wondered whether it was trying to squeeze his heart to stop, shut the air out of his lungs.

He had a sudden dread premonition of where the conversation would go. Lysandre would ask about the Mega Evolution theory, and make some dictatorial statement about Fleur-de-Lis and the École working together on the newly-successful project. He'd reiterate his job offer in light of the discovery, and emphasize the importance of collaboration between state institutions and private ventures – he'd be able to say that now, with Professor Axe gone. And Professor Sycamore would have to open his mouth and start the speech he'd been rehearsing since Saturday night:

Lysandre, I have given this a lot of thought, and I do not think it is appropriate for me to accept your offer, nor for you to make it. I think we must now reconsider the relationship we been believing that we have…

"I have something to tell you," said Lysandre, his voice hollow.

For the first time, as the jolt of combined terror and desire settled back into its usual background hum of yearning wretchedness, Professor Sycamore was able to take stock of the man. Lysandre's face held a raw, slightly wild look, as if he was feeling an emotion so intense that his features were not able to translate it into a normal expression. And he was (Professor Sycamore realised with a new shock) utterly dishevelled. Lysandre, normally so immaculately dressed, looked as Professor Sycamore had never seen him before: his greatcoat flapping open, raindrops dripping off it; the thin shirt underneath it creased, misbuttoned so that the top two didn't match up, revealing (ah god, god) the alabaster skin of his chest, goose-pimpled and damp with rain (slick and inviting, salt sweat and rainwater to be licked off, dear god), a tuft of golden-red hair visible at the low neckline; his shoes soaked and caked at the edges with mud; his mane of hair, briefly flattened by the drizzle, now drying and fluffing up absurdly, standing out around his head like a flame-red halo.

Professor Sycamore had been backing away from him without realising it, and now his back hit the door of his private office with a gentle thud. Lysandre stood in the middle of the room, dripping water onto the floor, his face still dark with that strange wildness.

"What is it?" Professor Sycamore croaked. He couldn't think. He could barely breathe.

"The Comte," said Lysandre.

"What Comte?" said Professor Sycamore stupidly.

"The Comte, my father," said Lysandre. His gaze was burning a terrible blue, blind and inward-turning. "My father. My father is dead."

Professor Sycamore had been holding his breathe, and now he let it out shakily. He had been shaking too; he hadn't noticed it until now.

"I am the Comte du Feu," said Lysandre.

Professor Sycamore's brain was doing nothing; he couldn't remember how to make words happen, or where thoughts came from. When his tongue kicked in, automatically, he managed, "I'm so sorry for your loss."

Lysandre swung his gaze towards him and met Professor Sycamore's eyes.

Everything, thought Professor Sycamore, everything you do, it affects me so powerfully it's like you're physically touching me. You think you're only staring at me but you've pinned me up on this wall, you've fastened my wrists and my ankles to the door frame with your gaze alone, you could come and hit me now and I wouldn't flinch, you've got me fixed. Come over here and hit me now, come and check my fastenings, come, dearest friend, beloved enemy, come.

"The funeral is tomorrow," said Lysandre, his voice oddly calm.

"Oh. That's quick," said Professor Sycamore, then thought, Arceus, why can't I shut up? 'That's quick'? What a sensitive observation.

"I am not officially the head of the Château de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt until his body has been returned to the earth," said Lysandre, who was now speaking in a tone so placid it was as if he was reading off an internal script. "The aristocracy rule by _droit de la terre_, quite literally."

"So you'll- you'll be returning to your family's estates?" asked Professor Sycamore, who had noted 'the aristocracy rule' but was feeling too overwhelmed to pursue it.

Lysandre broke their eye contact and stared restlessly around the room. Professor Sycamore felt as if a vice had been removed and he sagged a little. Mon dieu, he thought, but I wish I did not adore you so much, it plays havoc with my ability to speak and think and breathe, it makes me a volatile core of literalisms and poetry. Quelle pagaille!

"Yes," said Lysandre. "I will have to return. For a few days at least, perhaps a little longer. There will be a lot of signing of ancient documents and recording by the heralds."

"My goodness," said Professor Sycamore automatically, and hated himself.

"I will also have to go through the tiresome practice of finding a reliable witness from outside of the estates to ratify my signatures." Lysandre had quite calmed down by now, and was talking in an imperious monotone. "You probably aren't familiar with that sort of thing, Professor. It was introduced by the government some hundred and fifty years ago. The rights of the aristocracy ratified by the hand of the people! But it is very hard to find an upstanding citizen of sufficient authority. Normally a mayor will do, but I have not even met the local mayor. Some _paysan_ in a gold chain and hand-me-down robes."

The tension in the room had eased off since Lysandre's dramatic entrance, and Professor Sycamore now felt able to walk up to him with something resembling an appropriately sympathetic expression on his face.

"I don't know what to say, mon ami," he said gently, "Is there anything I can do?"

Three things happened very quickly.

Firstly, Lysandre turned to look at Professor Sycamore again, but since they were standing closer, Professor Sycamore was able to see the subtleties of the icy eyes and the bitten mouth, the twin tropes of his fantasies. They were suddenly soft and vulnerable in the harsh office light, making Lysandre look so very young, far younger than Professor Sycamore, like a very young, idealistic man who had come into the cruel wide world and lost his way.

Secondly, Professor Sycamore, moved beyond measure by the sight of Lysandre's face, laid his hand on Lysandre's arm and left it there, letting his fingers spread against the wet cloth of the greatcoat, feeling the tense muscles underneath.

Thirdly, Lysandre recoiled when he felt Professor Sycamore's hand and backed away quickly, but while blurting, "Will you come with me?"

He looked as though he regretted saying it the moment it was out of his mouth, and his face closed off and grew stony before the final syllable of the sentence was completed. Professor Sycamore, giddy and desperate, burst out, "Yes!" before Lysandre could apologise and correct himself, so that their sentences overlapped.

They blinked at one another idiotically.

"Yes," Professor Sycamore repeated, to make sure that Lysandre couldn't possibly mishear or misinterpret or ignore him. "Yes, of course I'll come with you."

Lysandre's face had regained some of its usual hauteur. "It's bad form for me to ask you, of course. You've only just returned from South Kalos, and I have to leave tomorrow morning. Please understand that this will not be a difficult time for me; my father and I were not close."

"It's fine," said Professor Sycamore. "Really." He cast around wildly for an excuse; he felt as if a door to a secret place, long-searched-for, had opened, but he had only seconds to run towards it and throw himself through the entrance before it closed again. "The- the Mega Evolution project is at such an important stage, it's vitally important that we agree on our joint priorities for the forthcoming year."

Lysandre's face went perfectly stony at that, as if Professor Sycamore had said something vulgar. Professor Sycamore tried again.

"Do, eh, do Pokémon professors count as upstanding citizens with sufficient authority?" he asked, hopefully.

Lysandre's face was still blank and hard, but he managed a small, tight smile.

"Yes, Professor, as a matter of fact they do."

"Well, good then, that's settled," said Professor Sycamore. He had to turn away so that Lysandre could not see the crazy smile on his face; it wouldn't be appropriate, at the announcement of a death. "I'm glad I could be of service to you, mon ami," he added.

Lysandre just nodded. "My car will be leaving the city at ten o'clock tomorrow morning," he said. "If you could come by my apartments a little before then…"

"Of course, of course," murmured Professor Sycamore, waving his hands vaguely, his heart singing. Then, "Oh. Er. I don't know where you live."

It sounded like a stalkerish thing to say and he blushed. Lysandre didn't notice, however. He was looking off to one side, briefly consumed by some private reverie.

"No," he said quietly, "of course you don't. Why would you?" He touched his fingers to his lips, then walked towards Pierre desk. "I'll write down the address," he said over his shoulder, pulling an open notebook towards himself.

Professor Sycamore watched him write the address and rip out the page, still foggy in the head with delight and, increasingly, fear. His father's dead, he thought, and he felt suddenly monstrous, taking advantage of the Comte's passing to creep closer to his son.

"Ah, Lysandre, won't you sit down a moment? You look quite exhausted, it must have been a difficult day for you… Sit down and I'll boil the kettle."

Lysandre handed him the scrap of paper. "Non merci," he said. He had retreated inside his shell again, although his general air of déshabillé still leant him a faintly crazed, faintly frantic quality. "I really must be going. I will see you tomorrow morning."

Professor Sycamore watched him walk towards the door and thought, what the hell just happened? What just happened? What happened? What?

Lysandre paused at the doorway and looked back at him. "Do you play chess, Professor?"

Ah, thought Professor Sycamore, and here is the grief, manifesting itself in weird ways, making him ask non-sequiturial questions. "My siblings and I used to play a _version_ of chess," he admitted cautiously. "It was called 'how far can you push a pawn up your nose'."

Lysandre ignored him. "It seems that people like to believe they are winning when they have captured the most pieces," he said. "But the endgame is always decided by the moves that were made covertly, the hidden strategies, the pieces your opponent did not notice being used. Secrecy. Secret advantages."

"Yes?" said Professor Sycamore, politely.

"There is something," said Lysandre quietly, "known as the 'two knights' endgame…"

"Mm?"

"But I looked it up," said Lysandre, now talking to himself, "and it seems that the endgame refers to two knights of the same colour, against the king."

He bit his lip thoughtfully, then smiled coldly at Professor Sycamore. "Bon soir, Professor," he said, and slipped into the darkness.


	8. Fire - Part I

Mais, vrai, j'ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes.

Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer:

L'âcre amour m'a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes.

Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j'aille à la mer!

- Arthur Rimbaud, 'Le Bateau Ivre'

Professor Sycamore didn't sleep all night. He lay in his bed and felt his pulse doing something peculiar, as if it was repeatedly scooping itself out and jumping back in again, watery and hysterical. His body felt light and quavering and there was a pain under his heart the size of two fingertips. Occasionally something would flicker in his throat too, like an invisible hand closing around it and squeezing. His cock was so agonisingly sensitive that when he turned over to lie on his back, the sensation of the covers brushing against the head of it sent a heady throb all the way into his stomach and along his legs. It was almost too intense to be pleasurable. He didn't dare touch it; he was afraid an orgasm might cause a heart failure.

Is this what a panic attack feels like? he wondered. Am I going to seize up and stop breathing? What a horrible irony it would be, to die the night before I take the journey that will undoubtedly kill me anyway, in a figurative sort of way.

My mind is so calm, he thought. He was lying still and squinting through the gap in his curtains, to see the metal-dark clouds lightening faintly as the morning struggled up behind them. I'm thinking so clearly. I wonder why my entire upper body is shaking.

When his alarm went off, he reached out, stopped it, and unfolded himself out of bed. His body felt bizarrely new and unfamiliar.

Those are my feet, he thought, looking at them. Off they go to the bathroom. I shall have a shower. What an interesting seven hours that was, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling.

He didn't feel tired at all, but his fingers were unsteady when he reached for the soap.

Vyvy and Beckett had spent the night in their Pokéballs and so had been spared the psychic pain of empathizing with their master. He dressed himself in utilitarian black and hung the two balls on his belt, before repacking his bag with mechanical efficiency. He realised he had no idea how long Lysandre expected him to stay, but he packed three days' worth of clothes, because three felt like a safe number.

Outside, the air was still and cool. Lumiose City had a quality of unrealness to it, like a very finely rendered 3D model, and Professor Sycamore felt as if he was walking through a simulation of his own life. He waved down a spare taxi and felt stupidly proud of having done this, as if he had proved to an audience that he could act like a convincing version of Professor Sycamore.

He handed the taxi driver the scrap of paper with Lysandre's address on. The driver whistled.

"Nice neighbourhood," he said, and started the meter.

The journey appeared to take seconds and also hundreds of years.

There was a large black car, with the coat-of-arms of the Château de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt over the doors, already parked outside of the building that the driver identified as Lysandre's – or rather, the large black car was parked in front of a high wall and a gate, behind which rose Lysandre's apartments.

Professor Sycamore, paying the taxi driver with autopilot politeness, took in the Pyroar figureheads, the finely-wrought iron of the gates, the extraordinary beauty of the building itself. Mon dieu, but I bet that cost a lot to buy, he thought, and felt rather relieved that, even through the tangled mess of his feelings, he could still think like a Lumiose City-dweller.

Professor Sycamore stood and stared for a bit after the taxi drove away. He knew the sensible thing to do would be to just walk up to the gate, press the bell and announce himself, but some half-formed dread prevented him.

What am I doing here, he thought, then real panic set in.

_What am I doing here._

_Putain. _

_I'm so weak. I'm so disgusting. I promised myself I'd finish this! I'm going to make it worse! I'm so weak!_

As he stood there, his heart climbing up his throat and his vision tunnelling, the gates swung open and Lysandre stepped out.

There was a man behind him, wearing a liveried uniform and carrying what was presumably Lysandre's luggage, but Professor Sycamore paid him barely any attention.

The dishevelled, confused Lysandre of the previous night had vanished, and Lysandre looked as sharply dressed and faultlessly presented as he habitually did. Unusually, he wore a Pokéball at his belt; the Litleo generally travelled in his arms, but not today. In the greyish day he shone like the heart of a flame in the ash of a hearth. When he saw Professor Sycamore, he gave him a slightly arch smile and put his head on one side, a mannerism of such leonine grace that Professor Sycamore felt his heart do something soft and painful.

He walked over to where Lysandre stood, barely able to feel his feet touching the pavement, afraid that he would trip because of it.

"Bonjour, Professor," said Lysandre solemnly. "You are here then." He kissed the Professor carefully. Professor Sycamore, who obsessively collected and curated Lysandre's different kisses, recognised this as Formal, Friendly: Lysandre pressed each of his cheeks briefly against Professor Sycamore's and made the merest gesture towards actually kissing, a soft 'mwph' sound that manifested itself torturously close to Professor Sycamore's ears.

"Bonjour, Lysandre," he managed, when Lysandre drew back. "Did you think I would not come?"

Lysandre shrugged one shoulder with diffident elegance. "I couldn't be sure. It was a lot to ask of you, after all. And you are notoriously forgetful."

"I hope you are not regretting asking me," said Professor Sycamore lightly. He had, in fact, been dreading exactly this.

Lysandre appeared to consider this, which threw Professor Sycamore into a state of internal turmoil. Eventually he said, "I do not regret it, Professor. But I feel some sorrow. It's not the same thing."

Professor Sycamore had the brains enough to realise that he was too sleep-deprived to analyse this statement. But he did think: let me be weak a little longer. Not for much longer. Just while there is a chance that he might, maybe, in his grief, in his exhaustion, need me. Just let me be useful once. Just a little longer, and then I promise I'll end it.

"Have you eaten, Professor?" asked Lysandre. Close up, Professor Sycamore could see the pale purple shadows under his eyes, like subtle bruises, and wondered whether Lysandre had spent the night wide-awake as well.

"Eh, no," he said, sheepishly. It hadn't even occurred to him that he might be hungry, but as soon as Lysandre said it, his stomach audibly growled. Lysandre's lips twitched as he tried to hide a smile and Professor Sycamore blushed.

I'm so embarrassing, thought Professor Sycamore. In a minute he'll ask me whether I remembered to go to the bathroom and I will throw myself under the wheels of his car.

"Well, neither have I. Fortunately for the both of us, my driver has set a passable petit déjeuner up in the car. Morgelle?"

The liveried apparition appeared soundlessly by Professor Sycamore's elbow, making him jump. "Seigneur?"

"Please take the Professor's bag. We should leave immediately – it's a three hour drive and I would prefer not to delay."

Professor Sycamore dazedly let Morgelle pry his overnight bag from his hand. "He- she- that is not your usual driver," he said to Lysandre quietly, as they walked towards the car.

"No. Morgelle is one of the staff of the estate. This is one of my father's cars. You will be dealing with the Comte now, not the head of Fleur-de-Lis."

"Oh," said Professor Sycamore. "Will that require a change of clothes? Should I tug at my forelock more?"

Lysandre gave him a tired smile and let Morgelle open the door for them.

The interior of the car was like nothing Professor Sycamore had seen before. It was small, true – it had to be, to fit in to the back of a car – but it looked more like a miniature private club than a passenger seat. It was upholstered in dark red leather, with tinted windows that hid the occupants from view, and illuminated by spotlights fixed into the roof of the car. Two seats were placed opposite one another, and there was a tiny fold-out table which had, yes, a plate with some still-warm croissants and a couple of cups of coffee on it.

They climbed in and sat down, Professor Sycamore with his back to the road and Lysandre with his back to the driver. Professor Sycamore couldn't help but notice that there was a dark screen that could be lifted between the driver and the back seats too, so that the passengers could close up all four walls and sit in a close, ethereally-lit private box. He forced himself to focus fixedly on a croissant, because he knew where this thought was leading.

"This isn't the most comfortable breakfast I have ever taken," said Lysandre drily, lifting one of the cups of coffee to his lips, "but it's better than nothing. You can eat that croissant, Professor, you don't have to stare it into submission."

Professor Sycamore tore off the end of the offending croissant and popped in it his mouth. There's quite a lot of floor space in here, he thought, I could quite easily lie on the floor, and then I'd be able to see the sky going past through the window and it would be nice and peaceful and he could be watching me touch myself while I was lying at his feet and wait a minute stop right there.

"You said it would take three hours to get to your father's- your estates," he said instead. "In Calincourt? Eastwards?"

Lysandre nodded and wiped a flake of croissant from his lips with a napkin.

"That's about a four hour drive, isn't it? A little longer, even?"

Lysandre gave Professor Sycamore another tired smile, as if he was resigned to the Professor asking stupid questions but didn't really have the energy to deal with them. "We'll break the speed limit, Professor," he said. "Who do you think is going to stop us?"

"Ah." Professor Sycamore took a sip of the coffee. It was excellent.

He felt rather shy of Lysandre and he had the impression that Lysandre didn't really know how to behave towards him either. Their friendship seemed to have been stretched and changed and twisted in so many ways over the past month – what with the end of the happy summer, the three week's absence, the bizarre proposition, the death of Professor Axe and the emotionally turbulent weekend – that, now they were forced to sit together quietly, they couldn't remember the appropriate tone to strike. They were like strangers to one another, and that was made more awkward by the (undoubtedly shared) knowledge that they were also friends. It was as if they had witnessed some horrible crime together and now they had to make small talk while the dust settled and the blood dried.

They finished their breakfast and Lysandre carefully lifted the tray it was set on, opened a little door beside him (which Professor Sycamore had not noticed) and stowed the crockery away. The table folded up. They stared at one another across the new space, each still withdrawn.

"So, tell me, what will being a, ah, a ratifier of the signatures, a citoyen-témoin, involve?" Professor Sycamore asked, to break the silence.

Lysandre sighed and stretched his long legs out. Professor Sycamore sat completely frozen for a moment, hoping and dreading that Lysandre's foot would brush against his ankle, but Lysandre was graceful even in confined spaces – he didn't put a foot wrong.

"I'm afraid we will have a busy and enervating day from the moment we step out of the car," Lysandre said. "You'll have to sit through some unexciting ceremonies, which will essentially be a series of legal readings but done by people in silly costumes, and you'll have to ratify my signatures with your own. That will take several hours, unfortunately. And after dinner you'll have to be present at the Épées à Minuit rite and you'll have to hold a sword, but don't worry, you won't have to do anything except look decorative."

"Oh, well, looking decorative is my Pokémon Power," said Professor Sycamore brightly. "Er, will it be a big sword?"

"Big enough."

"My goodness," said Professor Sycamore, who had to use every last shred of willpower in his body to not say 'that's what she said'. And because he used up all his willpower not saying that, the next thing he asked was:

"Will you have to fence?"

– and that was a mistake, because the next image that flashed up in his mind was one of Lysandre after a duel, cuts to his arms and chest, gasping fitfully in the snow as the blood turned the white drifts crimson. Oh, mon cher Lysandre, he would say, who has done this to you, let me help you… and then tearing open the coat, the shirt, binding the cuts with rough bandages torn from his own clothes, his hands over the trembling flesh, then taking Lysandre back to a safe place, somewhere quiet, rustic, rural-romantic, a wood fire burning in the hearth, Lysandre a little crazy with pain on the narrow bed, his body bucking as Professor Sycamore washed the wounds clean, worshipful and gentle, and then, after clean bandages had been applied and Lysandre lay back, panting, he'd say, tell me, mon amour, is there anything I can do for you to distract you from the pain? Oh yes, Professor, oh yes, yes please, yes, do that, yes, that's so good, oh yes, oh, give that to me, oh yes, that's what I need, you're so good to me, Professor, you're so good…

"Pardon?" he said, aware that Lysandre had said something about halfway through this set-piece fantasy.

Lysandre restarted. "I was saying that the fencing _should_ only be a formality. The days of feudal lore are long over."

Professor Sycamore caught the edge in Lysandre's voice, even as he squirmed unobtrusively in his seat, trying to shift his erection. "Should be?" he repeated.

"The Château du Feu is traditionally a warlord peerage," said Lysandre. "Merely a word, in this day and age, but it means that I have to duel, or at least go through the charade of duelling, with the petit générale, before I am accepted as the head of the family. The petit générale is the head of each private army; the head of the family becomes the grand générale. I am sure you have already worked this out."

"Oh, yes, I studied this at school," said Professor Sycamore. His mother had given quite a stirring lesson about it when he was eleven or twelve, and for weeks afterwards the favourite game in the playground was Knights of the Realm. "Each of the warlord peerages had their own private armies, which they'd raise on behalf of the King. Back in the days of the Kalosian Empire. Vive la Kalos! Well! But there are no private armies anymore, are there? Except mad political groups like the Chevaliers de la Flamme and the Brothers of Steel and so on, and they're not really affiliated with the aristocracy. They're just mad."

Lysandre bit his lip slowly. It was the most fascinating thing Professor Sycamore had ever seen. He sank his front two teeth into his bottom lip then let his lip unhurriedly scrape against the teeth, eventually righting itself but leaving Lysandre's mouth looking tender, damaged and kissable.

"No," he said finally, "there are no more private armies. Our 'petit générale' is really just the head butler."

Professor Sycamore burst out laughing and Lysandre looked up quickly and smiled.

"You laugh now," he said, "but we have a very unusual head butler. He taught me how to fence when I was a boy. I imagine he'll expect a little more from me than a few half-hearted swipes with a blade."

"Oh dear. And am I your second?"

Lysandre gave him another smile, this one warmer than the last. "Oh, I wouldn't let you step in for me, Professor," he said. "I'd much rather be run through than have you face Gagnon."

He turned away suddenly to look out of the window, while Professor Sycamore felt his entire body tingle with happiness. I shall remember him saying that forever, he thought. I will treat it like a benediction. It is the most affectionate thing he's ever said to me. Oh Arceus! I wish I could touch him.

"The actual funeral…" Lysandre said, still staring out of the window.

"Ah, yes," said Professor Sycamore, trying to rearrange his face into a solemn expression.

"That will take place as soon as we arrive. Everything has been arranged. I'll view the body, and then we'll bury it." There was a touch of something disgusted, bitter, in the way Lysandre said 'it'. "You won't have to be present. There is a room made up for you; you can rest, or explore the grounds, as you please. Someone will come for you when the actual ceremonies begin."

Professor Sycamore, his mind still ringing with Lysandre's words, said, "No, mon ami, I would far rather be by your side."

Lysandre kept his face turned towards the window, but his eyes moved to meet the Professor's. "That's… kind of you," he said, his voice impassive.

Careful, thought Professor Sycamore. Control yourself. Don't fawn on him, don't overestimate the meaning of a few friendly words. He said, "I'm sorry, I meant- I was barred from Professor Axe's funeral and I felt awful. I know you don't mean it this way, but I would prefer not to be barred again."

Lysandre let a breath out. "Of course. I apologise. I did not mean to suggest that you were not welcome."

They were on the very outskirts of Lumiose City by this time, and would soon be in the Kalosian countryside. Professor Sycamore leaned against the side of the car and watched the cloud-darkened landscape unspool. Here I am, he thought, with my angel of vengeance, the knife of my desire, incidentally a gentleman of perfect sangfroid, sitting opposite me, on our way to view the body of his dead father, at a mysterious estate where I will have to hold a sword and be scared of a butler. I have discovered Mega Evolution and I haven't slept since I was in Petit Meaulnes. What a day this is turning out to be.

The movement of the car was soothing. For all that they were speeding, Morgelle was an excellent driver and the effect was more like being borne away by dark wings than breaking the speed limit. Professor Sycamore was nervous, and frightened, and a little aroused, but he was also exhausted. Almost without realising he was doing it, he let his eyes closed, let his mind sink, and fell asleep.

xxxx

It felt as if he had only closed his eyes for five minutes. He awoke from a murky, dreamless oblivion when he felt a hand gently shaking his shoulder.

"Wstfgl?" he asked, and opened his eyes.

Lysandre, who had been shaking him, sat back. "We're here," he said, his voice low and strange.

Professor Sycamore blinked, startled. "We're here? Really? Mon dieu." He struggled upright – at some point during the journey he had completely slumped against the side of the car. "How long was I asleep for?"

"About two hours."

Professor Sycamore groaned. "I _am_ sorry, Lysandre. How rude of me. I can sleep anywhere .What absolutely dire company I am. Are you alright?"

"Fine," said Lysandre shortly. He was wearing a tight, pinched expression, like a man suffering from an appalling migraine and trying not to show it. "Here." He handed Professor Sycamore a napkin, which the Professor looked at with bemusement.

"Your chin," said Lysandre, in the same odd monotone, and Professor Sycamore touched his chin. It was slightly wet. Oh, fantastique, he thought bitterly. Formidable. I have drooled all over myself. This day just gets better and better. (And, with suppressed panic, he thought, I hope I didn't dream about him and not remember, I hope I didn't get hard in my sleep.)

The car had pulled up on a wide gravel driveway, which was set (Professor Sycamore noticed, as he dabbed at himself and mumbled some stupid apology) against a backdrop of rolling hills and far, wide lakes. In the distance, there was a suggestion of a town. Professor Sycamore absentmindedly handed the damp handkerchief back to Lysandre (who took it and stared at it, apparently stunned by the crassness of this gesture) and gazed wide-eyed at the scenery. Mon dieu, he thought, when he said 'estates' he really meant it. This place is enormous. There's so much space! It's bigger than my village!

Morgelle opened the door for them. Lysandre stepped out and Professor Sycamore followed him, his stiff joints creaking in protest.

The Château de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt was a gorgeous, imposing building, mixing the fairytale daintiness of the High Renaissance style with the grim, solid look of a stone keep built to withstand a siege. It reminded Professor Sycamore of Lysandre himself – a tall, broad-shouldered man with fastidious tastes and a physical lightness and grace that belied his powerful physique, that perfect melding of strength and beauty.

What Professor assumed to be the estate staff were lined up like a parade along the gravel driveway. There were dozens and dozens of them; everyone from the kitchen staff to the estate's Pokémon trainers to the private secretaries were ranged in two lines, leading towards the house. There were even a few larger Pokémon, all of whom stood to attention in their various ways. Outside the front door stood a tall, bald black-clad man, flanked on either side by fellows in very silly and elaborate costumes. Lysandre, after a brief, appraising glance at the staff, strode straight over to the tall man.

He moves differently here, thought Professor Sycamore. He's always been authoritative but it was more contained, more diffuse when he was just Lysandre du Feu, the head of Fleur-de-Lis. As the Comte, he is a commander.

He followed Lysandre, giving the assembled staff his very best Oh-You-Look-Nice-And-I'm-Nice-Too smile, until he noticed that everyone was wearing a black armband and remembered why he was there.

He stood by Lysandre's side, hoping he was maintaining an expression of alert sympathy. He felt a little proud and simultaneously very exposed, wondering how his arrival would look to the estate's staff; did they wonder why Lysandre had brought him? He certainly did.

"The heralds of the Crown present their compliments to Lysandre de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt, and express their sympathies for the loss of his father," said one of the men in the ridiculous costumes.

"On behalf of the Château de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt, I bid the heralds of the Crown welcome and do put the estates and the people therein at their disposal," said Lysandre. He was speaking in the haughty monotone he used when he was reading from an internal script, drummed into him from birth.

"Bonjour, Lysandre," said the tall, bald man.

Professor Sycamore, who had been settling himself into Boredom mode, blinked, surprised.

"Welcome back," the man added.

"Bonjour, Gagnon," said Lysandre. "This is Professor Augustine Sycamore, he is my chosen citoyen-témoin and will be acting as the ratifier of my signatures. Professor Sycamore, this is Gagnon, the head butler."

Professor Sycamore took this in. Gagnon was almost as tall as Lysandre but lean and rangy. He wasn't just bald, Professor Sycamore realised, he was almost completely hairless. His eyebrows were a very thin line above each eye, and he did not appear to have any lashes. His skin was smooth and matte, though his eyes were old and watchful – he could be aged anywhere between forty and sixty. He looked like a cobra. When he saw Professor Sycamore staring, he gave the academic a large, snake-like grin. A gold tooth glinted.

"_You're_ a butler?" said Professor Sycamore, astonished.

"Mais oui. Welcome, Professor Sycamore. We have a room made up for you."

One of the two heralds – the younger of the two – perked up. "Are you the same Professor Sycamore who cracked Mega Evolution?"

Professor Sycamore perked up too. "Why, yes I am! How quickly good news travels."

"We were most sorry to hear about the passing of Châtelaine Margaux des Aix," added the older herald, and gave his colleague a sharp look.

"Ah, yes, it has been the saddest and most shocking few days," said Professor Sycamore. "Thank you."

"Shall we go in?" Gagnon interrupted laconically. "We've made the Red Chambers up for you, Lysandre."

They stepped through the door into an enormous entrance hall, dominated by a wood and marble staircase. There were two statues at the bottom, polished gleaming white and making some classical reference involving urns and dead bodies. Both statues had been blindfolded with black cloths. As Professor Sycamore looked around, he noticed that all of the statues were blindfolded, and a black cloth had been hung over the face of a grandfather clock further along a corridor.

"They may not look upon the new Comte until the old one has been returned to the earth," explained the younger herald, who had hopefully sidled up to the Professor. "We'll remove the blindfolds after Épées à Minuit."

"You covered the face of the grandfather clock," observed Professor Sycamore, "but not the portraits hung on the walls."

The younger herald smiled a little sadly. "Well, Professor, tradition is a bedrock but it rarely makes much sense."

"Do any of our little personal rituals make much sense?" said the Professor, more or less to himself. He treated the herald to a vague smile, and the herald blushed.

Up ahead, Lysandre and the dark butler seemed to be having an argument.

"I will sleep in my old bedroom," Lysandre was saying.

"Impossible, Lysandre," said Gagnon, his voice lazy but firm. "You are the Comte now, more or less. You can't sleep in a room intended for an eighteen-year-old."

"I have no desire to occupy my father's old chambers."

"And your grandfather, and your great-grandfather before him, and so on."

"Nevertheless, I have no desire to sleep there, or wash there, or eat there."

"There is no precedent for such remarkable behaviour."

"I am the Comte," said Lysandre, with a blade in his voice, "and I will sleep where I want."

Gagnon raised his near-invisible eyebrows. "As you wish." He snapped his fingers at a waiting servant, who must have come in from the line outside. "Take the Comte's bags to the old tower bedroom, and take Professor Sycamore's bag to his room." He turned around and flashed Professor Sycamore another glinting grin. "The formalities of the funeral begin now, Professor, but fortunately you will not be required for the mourning. Will you go up and rest? Or perhaps you would like to explore? The grounds are still quite beautiful at this time of year."

"He will stay with me," said Lysandre, and Professor Sycamore fought the urge to grab Lysandre's hand and kiss it.

Gagnon raised one eyebrow this time. "Your citoyen-témoin will accompany you to the Chapel of Rest?" The old herald didn't like this either; Professor Sycamore heard him snort.

"Yes. But first I would like to see my mother's chambers," said Lysandre.

"They have been shut up for years, Lysandre. Besides, it is really imperative that we begin the funeral rites, and they cannot begin until you have seen your father."

"Professor Sycamore and I will visit my mother's chambers," said Lysandre, in that same knife-edge tone, "and then we will go together to the Chapel of Rest."

Professor Sycamore felt a little tug at his elbow and realise the younger herald was anxiously holding his sleeve. Lysandre and Gagnon held one another's eyes for a few tense seconds, then Gagnon smiled his irreverent smile.

"As you wish," he said, and bowed with palpable irony. The young herald let go of Professor Sycamore's elbow and rolled his eyes at him.

Lysandre turned to him. "I hope you do not mind, Professor," he said. "I did warn you that today would be unpleasantly crowded."

"I don't mind at all," said Professor Sycamore mildly. "I'm here to be of service, after all." He felt Gagnon's lashless eyes travelling succinctly over his face and body, perhaps noting him for future reference, and thought, you leave me alone, you scary man.

"Follow me," said Lysandre, and like an obedient disciple, Professor Sycamore followed him, leaving Gagnon and the heralds staring after them.

He barely took in the sumptuousness and the ancient splendour of the château. He felt as if his life was suddenly working in fast-forward and he was having to run to keep up with the chain of events. Twenty-four hours ago he had been in South Kalos, promising himself that he would cut Lysandre out of his life; now here he was in Calincourt, walking with Lysandre through the private places of his childhood, closer to him than he'd ever dared hope to be.

They did not speak as they walked. Professor Sycamore was sure he would never be able to find the right words, because 'let me hold you' would never be the right words.

They walked up a spiralling flight of stairs, made of dark wood and set with mother-of-pearl, and passed through an arched doorway into a long gallery, dominated on one side by portraits and on the other by huge baroque windows. The windows looked out onto a little stone courtyard, set in the roof and walled in on all four sides. A dead fountain sat in the middle of the courtyard, somehow the most depressing thing Professor Sycamore had seen all day.

The portraits were astounding.

Most were gorgeous in their execution but old and unremarkable in their content – there was a sameness to the faces and the elaborate costumes. As they walked along the gallery, though, two caught the Professor's eye and he paused in front of them.

The first one to stop him looked like a fairly modern painting. It depicted a powerfully built man in full military dress, with forceful black eyes and a fine, full beard the colour of autumn leaves. His hair was an electric shock of dark red. He stood with one hand on his hip and another carelessly resting on a double-handed broadsword. A Charmeleon lay curled at his feet, its eyes watchful. He was handsome, in a brutal, martial sort of way, and looked very severe. The name on the portrait read, 'Lazare du Feu'. His resemblance to Lysandre was disturbing, in that it made Professor Sycamore see something new in Lysandre.

"My father," said Lysandre shortly, refusing to linger in front of it. "The Charmeleon evolved into a Charizard and became one of his primary battle Pokémon. It's dead now. The portrait was painted years before I was born, before he married my mother, even."

"He looks quite young," said Professor Sycamore, staring up at the late Comte.

"He would have been in his early thirties, I suppose. Your age, Professor."

Professor Sycamore followed Lysandre, his eyes still on the portrait of the old Comte du Feu. It was strange to think that the man had ever been the same age as him, had ever even had that in common with him; the distance between them seemed inevitable, unsurpassable.

The second portrait that made him pause was near the end of the gallery. It was an older portrait, and looked as if it had been much abused – there was a smear in one corner of the canvas, indicative of someone throwing acid on it, and a thin white line running through the middle, which suggested a mended tear. The name on the portrait read 'Lothaire du Feu'.

The man in the picture was sitting, slightly slumped, in a chair. He had the air of a strong man gone to waste, deteriorating though private vice. The hair was that same dark autumnal red, darker than Lysandre's, and flecked with iron grey at the temples. His beard and moustache were trimmed very thinly and he smiled a crooked, cruel smile. He looked slightly like a pirate, slightly like a seducer and very like a killer. As Professor Sycamore's eyes adjusted to the darkness of the painting (and this one was very dark, almost all varnish), he realised what he had assumed to be shadows behind the chair was actually a huge, leering Gengar.

Lysandre stood with him. "My grandfather," he explained, quietly. "Dead before I was born, in suspicious circumstances, but most things about him were suspicious. My father loathed him. My mother too, actually. He was unusual for a du Feu, he specialised in Ghost Pokémon."

"What sort of suspicious circumstances?" asked Professor Sycamore, transfixed before the sullenly savage portrait.

"I would prefer not to go in to details," said Lysandre, "but 'laundry room' and 'evisceration' ought to sum it up."

"Oh," said Professor Sycamore. "Ew."

"Quite."

The gallery appeared to come to a dead end, but when Lysandre reached out a hand and pushed at what Professor Sycamore had initially assumed was a wall, he realised it was a cleverly-disguised door. Lysandre's push did not have much effect, other than making the wood creak. He saw annoyance flash over Lysandre's face and stood back smartly.

Lysandre shook out his cuffs and eyed the disguised door. "It's stiff," he said, flatly.

"Does it lead to your mother's chambers? Your butler said it had been shut up for years."

"That just means the chambers are no longer in use. But if it's stiff, it means no one has gone in here for years, either. Not even to clean." Lysandre's voice was taut, coldly furious. "They just closed it up and left it."

Professor Sycamore said nothing. He stood behind Lysandre and watched him rolling his shoulders, like a man squaring up for a fight.

"That's the sort of thing my father does, you see. Did. The sort of thing he did. Anything he disliked, he wiped out. Obliterated. Rendered nothing."

With that, he threw the full weight of his body against the door. It creaked in protest and then wobbled slowly open.

The air that blew out smelt dusty, with a sharp note of decay. Lysandre stepped through, massaging the shoulder that had hit the door, and the Professor, with an anxious sigh, trotted after him.

There was a short corridor which led into a room, which had doors leading to another two rooms. Lysandre chose the door on the left. Professor Sycamore couldn't begin to guess what use the rooms had once had – clumps of furniture stood about, draped in white dust-sheets, their shapes unguessable. A single broken chair lay on its side in a corner, looking as if it had been thrown; it put Professor Sycamore in mind of an injured body. The wallpaper was peeling from the walls. Filth of an uncertain nature – dust? earth? debris? – covered the floors. A mirror hung on one wall, cloudy and spotted with age.

Lysandre walked slowly around the shapes under the dust-sheets. Professor Sycamore felt as if he was there not as a friend or a companion, but as an audience. The Professor was not just a ratifier of signatures; his purpose seemed to be the ratification of memory.

Professor Axe had once described the two du Feus as being locked in a permanent state of tension, physically far apart but bound by the taut wires of their shared blood, maintaining their equilibrium through an equal and opposite reaction to one another. Now the Comte was dead, and Professor Sycamore could see what had happened – Lysandre had been cut loose, was flailing, was casting around for something to bind himself against, in order to regain his balance. Lazare's death had forced Lysandre to reassess his life. The monster was dead; long live the happy ending. But happy endings never offer real closure, because life goes on and on.

As he and the Professor walked slowly through the rotting room, the Professor felt sure he'd been summoned to the château to witness Lysandre building himself out of the fragments of his past and the blocks of his future. Who better to witness the new man, rising from the flames, than a friend whose very job consisted of studying evolution?

If only you knew, he thought, how perfect this role is for me, my life for the past year and a half has been a devout exegesis of your every breath and movement. But this thought also made him feel a little desolate, because he knew it meant he was kept permanently at arm's length, watching Lysandre through the screen of his self-becoming.

They had walked over, now, to some strange box protruding from the wall. It had been smashed, and twisted metal and glass lay on the floor in front of it like shed leaves.

The two men stared at it for several seconds before Professor Sycamore gasped and said, "It an oven! And- a stove top?"

Lysandre almost smiled. "Yes. She had it put in when I was about five. Some fit of pique, I think – something to do with her refusing to eat with my father."

"And so she'd cook for herself?"

"Sometimes. Not really. Mostly she had food brought to her chambers. It was the principle of the thing."

"Was she a good cook?"

"She was a terrible cook," said Lysandre, with a sort of weary affection. "I use to sneak up here to eat with her when I was a young boy, and she used to try and cook for me, and, oh, mon dieu, the bizarre concoctions she created." He shook his head. "Et puis, I learned to cook from first principles. I wanted to sit with her but I also wanted to eat something edible."

They stood side by side and looked at the remains of the oven. It looked as if someone had taken a mallet to it.

"When we first met," said Professor Sycamore slowly, "I don't know if you remember… it was at the launch party for your café…"

Lysandre turned away and started to walk to another part of the room. Professor Sycamore panicked momentarily, unsure what he had said to offend Lysandre, but then Lysandre said, over his shoulder, "Yes. I remember."

"You- you mentioned that you set up the Café Lysandre with the money she had left you. And, ah…"

"And that I had not seen her in several years before her death. Yes." Lysandre paused in front of a low shape and threw off the dust sheet. Grime and ashy mess flew through the air.

Professor Sycamore went to join him. Lysandre had uncovered a bijou writing desk, littered with fountain pens which lay in dried pools of their own bled-out ink, faded and yellowed paper, some hair ribbons. In the middle of the desk was a picture that Professor Sycamore had to look away from, because it made him feel so weak that he had to grip the edge of the writing desk for support.

It was in a plain gold frame and the glass in front of it was cracked. Lysandre picked it up and ran his thumb over it, and Professor Sycamore heard the faint crunch of glass scraping against glass.

"Be careful," he said, but in a voice so strangled he wasn't sure whether Lysandre had heard.

The picture was a photo of Céléstine, the late Comtesse. She had been one of the most perfectly beautiful women Professor Sycamore had ever seen. Her hair was a cloak of pale gold, her limbs were pearly white. She was tall and sweet and lovely, glowing like a precious stone. She had exactly the same narrow bright blue ice-chip eyes as Lysandre, and Professor Sycamore, when he was able to look at the photo again, was as disturbed by the resemblance between Céléstine and Lysandre as he had been by the resemblance between Lazare and Lysandre. Seeing the portrait of Lazare had made him see the darkness, the cold anger and the discipline that held Lysandre so rigid; but in Céléstine's blue eyes there was something yielding, desperately unhappy, as if the horror and the sorrows of the world were always visible to her, always pricking at her and hurting her. He realised that this melancholy quality was something he had often seen in Lysandre's eyes; he wondered why he had never put a name to it before.

In the photo, Céléstine held a smiling, red-headed boy of no more than nine, his hands clasped around Céléstine's neck, his cheeks pink and flushed with happiness. He looked so innocent. Professor Sycamore couldn't bear it – he looked away again, and this time he moved away from the desk.

Lysandre still held the photo. "I know I have mentioned this before, Professor," he said, in his didactic monotone, "but let me stress that my parents' marriage was not a happy one. My mother was a very weak woman. She dealt with her difficulties in the grossest and most destructive ways possible. She was an opium addict and an alcoholic. She loved me, I am sure, but she was not a good mother, and towards the end she cared more about her cravings than she did about me. She died drunk, choked on her own vomit. They did not find her for three days – it was not unusual for her to shut herself up for weeks at a time. I did not attend her funeral. I had not seen her in years. I wanted to remember her as she was."

Professor Sycamore put his hand over his heart and hung his head. It hurts, he thought, it hurts me to hear this, it hurts me to not be able to comfort you, it hurts. Please, please, let me comfort you. Show me what I need to do. Let me, oh, let me.

He didn't say anything, though.

He looked up at the gentle 'clk' noise of Lysandre slowly putting the photo back on the writing desk. He stared at it for several seconds longer, then shook himself and appeared to come to a decision.

"And now, Professor," he said, "let's go and see my father."

xxxx

The Chapel of Rest was a low stone building, conspicuously modest in design, set in the middle of the family graveyard. This was almost a half-hour walk from the château, although at Gagnon's insistence they took a carriage, drawn by two Rapidash, which took considerably less time.

The carriage was intended for Lysandre alone. Professor Sycamore, insofar as he was invited to the funeral at all, was supposed to stay with the rest of the château's party – comprising the heralds, the dark butler and the rest of the staff – which would follow on foot, to give Lysandre time to face his father. Lysandre, however, barely gave Gagnon and the older herald time to make this argument before he crushed it, giving no reason but remaining absolutely firm. So Professor Sycamore rode with him.

The carriage was small and driverless (the Rapidash knew where they were going). There was space for two, just about – there was barely an inch between them, and Professor Sycamore felt like the side of him closest to Lysandre was burning with need. He wished the Rapidash were a little clumsier, that the road leading the Chapel were bumpier, so he might have an excuse to press himself against Lysandre, if only for a second or two. But perhaps it was for the best. As it was, he held himself unnaturally stiffly, to prevent even accidental touching; he was sure that if he felt Lysandre's body against his own in any way, even in the most inconsequential way, he'd give in, press his face into Lysandre's neck and put his arms around him. _Mon cher, mon cher, I'll be whatever you need me to be, tell me what I have to do._

"Your estates are marvellous," he said, a little huskily.

"Yes. I had forgotten how beautiful they were," replied Lysandre. He was staring out of the window with a locked determination. "We should go for a walk tomorrow. Out to the lakes."

"Bon idée! I'd like that." He said it fast, like a child frantically grabbing for a present, and felt ashamed immediately. Lysandre looked at him, then nodded and looked away again.

The manicured walks close to the château gave way to a wilder landscape. The du Feu family graveyard was a closed, sombre garden in the middle of the heath that comprised the large part of the estates. Professor Sycamore saw the Chapel ahead and felt his stomach constrict with an instinctive, primal fear. Somehow, in the freakish excitement of the day, he had forgotten what the real purpose of Lysandre's visit to his family home was – to look at a dead body and put it in the ground.

The carriage paused outside the gates of the graveyard. Lysandre didn't move.

"Ça va, mon ami?" Professor Sycamore asked gently.

Lysandre turned his face towards him. He looked shockingly drawn – his jaw was tight, his skin was ashen, and his eyes were glittering with some violent internal coruscation of the soul.

"Ça va mal," he said, hollowly, and got out of the carriage.

No birds sang in the trees in the graveyard. There were more statues here, strange monstrous angels and harsh renderings of the once-alive, their outlines smoothed by decades, perhaps centuries, of rain. The grass was thick and lush, but there were no mischievous Pokémon dwelling there.

"Do you want to be alone?" Professor Sycamore asked Lysandre at the door of the chapel.

"No, I don't," said Lysandre, in the same hollow voice.

I could take his hand, thought Professor Sycamore. It wouldn't be strange. It might even be the right thing to do. I could take his hand.

Lysandre pushed the door open and, for once, for one of the very rare times in his life, Professor Sycamore forgot all about Lysandre.

Lazare, the late Comte du Feu, lay in state on a stone table in the middle of the austere chapel. In life, he had been a large and dominating man; in death he was still an imposing figure. His face was waxy and pale. (Obviously, thought Professor Sycamore, a bit madly, obviously it is waxy and pale, he is dead and all the blood has run to the bottom of his head.) It was sunken and set in an expression of cold disapproval. He was older than Professor Sycamore had expected him to be – his hair was white, with just a hint of the dark red it had once held, and his fingers were twisted and twig-like.

Lysandre gripped the edges of the coffin and stared down into the death mask of his father.

Professor Sycamore could hear him breathing, hard, through his nose, his lips pressed shut. A muscle twitched in his cheek.

They stood like this for a minute, maybe more: Lysandre leaning over the coffin, mesmerized, and Professor Sycamore nearby, watching him. After a little while, though, Professor Sycamore silently turned and left the Chapel, leaving Lysandre to wrestle with his demons.

Outside, he leaned against the wall of the Chapel and breathed out slowly. His heart was racing and he felt a little sick with fear-adrenalin. The graveyard was a lonely place but it was better than being in that cold dark room. It actually felt warmer outside, despite the overhanging clouds and the bite of the autumn wind.

Professor Sycamore had almost got his heart rate back to normal when Lysandre pulled the door of the chapel open and stepped into the graveyard. He was still pallid; he looked drained, as if he had been fighting and was physically overcome. He did not look at Professor Sycamore, but leaned against the wall next to him.

"Well," he said, but his voice faltered, and he swallowed and tried again. "Well. He's definitely dead."

Professor Sycamore gave a shout of laughter, unable to stop himself, and clapped his hand over his mouth. Aghast, he looked at Lysandre, his hand still over his mouth and his eyes stretched wide. Lysandre was wide-eyed too.

We must look crazy, thought Professor Sycamore. He lowered his hand.

"Will he be buried here?" he asked Lysandre. The new Comte shrugged and waved a hand vaguely towards his right. For the first time Professor Sycamore noticed that, over there among the graves, there was a pile of earth and a waiting hole in the ground.

"We'll bury him there," said Lysandre, his eyes still stretched wide. "Although… although…" He stopped. His voice was unsteady. Professor Sycamore looked at him uneasily.

"Although?" he prompted, as kindly as he could.

"Although… you- you would have thought with- with the family name being- du Feu- you would have thought we'd- we'd cremate him."

Lysandre had difficulty getting this out – his voice kept catching – and when he managed to finished, he started shaking spasmodically. Professor Sycamore, disturbed, stood up straight and made to touch him, but then he listened carefully and realised that Lysandre was laughing.

"We- we should have burned him," choked Lysandre, and broke into howls of laughter.

It was so absurd and grotesque that Professor Sycamore started to laugh too, and soon they were both laughing uncontrollably, clutching at their sides, supporting themselves against the Chapel walls. The noise tore through the quiet graves.

When Professor Sycamore's chest started to hurt from laughing, he thought, alright, ça suffit, we're becoming hysterical. He forced himself to bring the insane hilarity under control, and was soon feeling quite cold and weirded out.

Lysandre kept hiccupping and laughing for a few seconds more, but eventually subsided. His eyes were still very wide and he bent slightly forward with his hands on his knees, panting. Professor Sycamore reached out to touch his arm and he flinched and looked at the Professor with a strange and wild expression on his face.

Don't touch him, thought Professor Sycamore furiously to himself. _Don't touch him_. I need to get this tattooed on my arm. _Don't touch him. Leave him alone._ I hate myself, I somehow always make excuses to put my hands on him. He doesn't want it, damn it. _Don't touch him_.

He looked up to see a crowd of mourners approaching, from the château, like a line of stumbling Murkrows. The figure of Gagnon was already distinguishable close to the graveyard's gates. He moved fast, Professor Sycamore realised, faster than the rest of the procession, like a snake striking.

They straightened up and watched Gagnon coming towards them, his black coat flapping in the wind. There was a buckle on his belt, orange and red with some sort of flame insignia on it, and it glinted ominously even in the cloud-covered half-light.

"Welcome," said Lysandre witheringly, and Professor Sycamore had to reach behind him and scrape his knuckles along the stone of the wall to keep from laughing again.

"Have you seen him?" asked Gagnon shortly, ignoring Professor Sycamore's presence entirely.

"I have. Where is his ring?"

Gagnon nodded to himself, as if Lysandre had passed a test. "It's in the safe, in the library of the Red Chambers. If you were sleeping there tonight…"

"I will retrieve it tomorrow," said Lysandre. He had become very calm again – dangerously calm. He rubbed his beard with his hand, in the manner of a man with something on his mind. "I noticed he was still wearing his wedding band."

"That is because the Comte understood that tradition always trumped personal aversions. He was married and he produced an heir; he will be buried with his wedding band. The other ring is his father's ring, and his father before him, and it was meant for you."

"You mourn him," said Lysandre. It was not a question. He was watching the dark butler thoughtfully and slightly warily.

"He was my master," said Gagnon coldly, "and if you do your duty, I will be pleased to call you my master too."

"But I am not my father. Am I?"

Gagnon regarded him. "One day, Lysandre, you might be," he said. "If you are strong enough."

The rest of the mourning party had caught up with them by this time, and Gagnon broke away to instruct three of the men – evidently this trio and Gagnon would be bearing the coffin. Lysandre caught Professor Sycamore's eyes.

"We should go," said Lysandre. "We need to return him to the earth."

xxxx

The actual funeral was a strange, choreographed affair. Professor Sycamore had to stand away from the graveside, because he was just the citoyen-témoin, and so he watched the service over the black-clad shoulders of the household staff. Gagnon, Lysandre, the heralds and a few of the more senior estate members stood by the lip of the grave. Professor Sycamore was struck by the insular nature of the mourners – there were no other aristocrats, no other faces from the old families. He wondered why that was.

They sang two songs during the service. One was an old war song, a peculiarly uplifting marching tune that Professor Sycamore recognised and knew the words for (Georges Sycamore sometimes sang it too, when he was feeling drunk and maudlin, and his children had picked it up). The other was a haunting dirge, written in court Kalosian, which Professor Sycamore didn't recognise and didn't understand all the words for. Most of the estate staff didn't, it seemed, but he was touched and unnerved by the clear coppery ring of Lysandre's voice. He'd never heard Lysandre sing. He should have known that his voice would have the quality of a holy choir, the summons of warlike angels.

The coffin was lowered into the grave and the shovel was first handed to Lysandre. He said something about returning the body of Lazare de la Masséna du Feu-Calincourt to the earth from whence he had come (and something more about the great quiet of eternity bracketing the sorrowful noise that was life) and started to cover the coffin with earth from the pile beside the grave.

Professor Sycamore got the feeling that this was supposed to be a purely ceremonial gesture, as after the fourth or fifth shovelful, feet started shuffling and the estate staff started muttering nervously. But Lysandre kept throwing the earth into the hole, methodical and intent, until Gagnon stepped over and wrest the shovel from his hands.

After that, the grave-filling was handed over to the men who had been waiting with serious spades.

Professor Sycamore followed Lysandre back to the waiting carriage outside the gates. He had no idea whether he was supposed to be walking back, or whether he was supposed to stay at the grave, or at what point he was supposed to do the thing he had been brought here to do. He decided that, unless he was actually stopped, he was going to stay beside Lysandre. The thought made him smile sadly: it was exactly what he had always wanted to do, but the circumstances made it impossible to enjoy.

A white-blue flash over the heath made him look round.

"Was that lightening? Is it going to rain?" he asked.

"No," said Lysandre. He had stopped and was staring out across the estates, his expression closed. He raised an arm slowly – Professor Sycamore thought it was a salute, but he then realised Lysandre was pointing and followed his finger.

In the near distance, a bulky, vaguely serpentine shape was visible in the air, supported by impossibly small wings and flying unsteadily about twenty feet off the ground. As they watched, there was another blinding flash from the mouth of the creature, which smashed into the heath, kicked up a shower of clods and left a deep scar in the ground. The flying shape hovered then dropped to earth, its movements loose and uncontrolled. Even with the distance between them, Professor Sycamore could hear the creature's groans and sobs.

"It smashed its Pokéball, Comte," called a gravelly voice – one of the estate's Pokémon trainers, pausing uncertainly by the carriage. "And every attempt made to recapture it has failed. We've been trying since the old Comte passed, but we might not be able to return it to the estate."

"It's a Dragonite," said Professor Sycamore, marvelling. He had never seen one before. "It's a fully grown Dragonite."

"It's Degaule," said Lysandre. "My father's last battle Pokémon."

The Dragonite thrashed its tail. Another sob carried over on the wind. Professor Sycamore thought, with sudden chest-squeezing guilt, of Blautsauger, the bereft Noivern. He should have checked on the Noivern before he left for South Kalos. There was no way Didier des Aix would have been able to recapture it – it was far too closely linked to Professor Axe.

"What will happen to the poor beast?" he asked, although he already knew the answer. Lysandre raised an eyebrow.

"You are a Pokémon professor. You have your own Pokémon. You know how psychosymbiosis works."

Professor Sycamore nodded gloomily. Blautsauger and Degaule would not be able to accept another trainer; their ties to their old masters were too strong. They would both return to the wild as broken animals, until such a time as they were ready to accept a new trainer or – more likely – they died. Pokémon grief was much purer and simpler than human grief, and in many ways more honest.

As they looked out across the green, the Dragonite rose into the air again, and with unnerving speed shot out into the horizon, the faint sounds of its sorrow trailing behind it.

They climbed into the carriage. Professor Sycamore felt bad and rotten inside, thinking of poor Blautsauger. The carriage pulled away and, to distract himself, he vaguely indicated the graveyard now behind them.

"That was… very moving."

"I just wanted to make sure he was under the ground," said Lysandre. His hands were specked with soil and he rubbed them distractedly.

"Ah." Professor Sycamore wriggled on the seat, caught between wanting to take Lysandre's hands in his own and knowing this would be horribly inappropriate. "Well. I noticed there wasn't anyone from outside of the estate there either."

Lysandre nodded, still rubbing his hands. "It was an extremely unusual situation. Apparently my father had requested a closed funeral. He was a very private man." He stretched his fingers, pursed his lips. "I never… knew what he was thinking."

They rode back in silence. Even in this close proximity to Lysandre, Professor Sycamore could not stop thinking about Degaule.

The rest of the afternoon was a blurred ordeal for the Professor. Gagnon and the heralds ushered him in to a drawing room, where the heralds made a series of formal, boring speeches and Lysandre made a series of formal, boring replies. A thick stack of documents lay on the table.

At first, the younger herald tried to keep Professor Sycamore up to speed with the legal proceedings, sotto voce, but after a disapproving tut from his older colleague, he was forced to withdraw. Professor Sycamore felt the fog of sleep deprivation fill his mind. He signed where he was told to sign and said what he said told to say (formal, boring speeches he had to repeat, assuring the heralds that the new Comte du Feu was definitely the Comte du Feu and not an imposter Comte du Feu in a red wig).

The sun had gone down by the time they were finished and Professor Sycamore's eyelids had started to droop. The heralds bowed and gathered up the signed documents. "We'll see you at Épées à Minuit, Comte," said the older herald, and they followed Gagnon out, leaving Lysandre and the Professor alone in the drawing room. Professor Sycamore yawned enormously.

"Don't worry, Professor, you can have a nap before dinner," said Lysandre, his tone amused. He seemed to have unwound since the burial.

"Oh thank goodness for that," said Professor Sycamore. "Mon dieu, that was so _boring_. I could feel my brain turning to cheese. Are you the Comte now?"

"I will be after midnight," said Lysandre, "provided Gagnon does not actually try to kill me."

Professor Sycamore smiled at him bashfully and rubbed the back of his neck where it had gone stiff. "This is all so strange," he said.

"Yes," said Lysandre. He bit his lip in that slow, delicious way again, stirring Professor Sycamore's jaded nerves.

"Why are you here, Professor?" he asked, finally.

"Because you asked me to be here," said Professor Sycamore. Because, he wanted to add, I'll do anything you ask of me. I long to mean something to you. If you had asked for me, I would somehow have dragged myself here even if I were locked up somewhere, even if I were in chains. How will I end it? How can I escape this? All you have to do is whistle and I come running.

"You did not have to come."

"But I'm your friend," said Professor Sycamore, "aren't I?"

Lysandre gave him a long look.

How many times are we going to do this? thought Professor Sycamore, the tired fog rising and clouding his eyes. How many rhetorical questions do I have to ask myself before I give in and confess everything to him and flee? It's so sickeningly stupid. I'm tired, I want him, I'm tired of all this.

"Yes," said Lysandre, "you are my friend. And you're a good man, Professor." He sat up, covered his face with both hands and rubbed it, his fingers digging in to his forehead. "I've always thought that. About you. You're good."

"And you think you're bad?" asked Professor Sycamore, then went, "Wurgh!" and shook himself. Lysandre stared.

"Sorry," said the Professor, "I am really very tired and I am going to start asking you stupid questions in a moment. Please ignore me. You said something about a nap?"

Lysandre nodded, his expression suddenly distant. He's closed himself off again, thought Professor Sycamore. Regular as clockwork, every time.

"One of the footmen will take you up to your room," said Lysandre, and rang a small bell. "Dinner will be at eight. We'll take it here, I am in no mood to open up one of the dining rooms. It will be an informal meal, Professor. Just like old times."

xxxx

In fact, the Professor very nearly overslept. He'd fallen asleep fully dressed, unconscious before his head even hit the pillow, and when he woke up, the clock read half past seven and he was feeling groggy and sweaty.

The room and its en suite were decorated with a very old-fashioned and restrained good taste, which was the best critique Professor Sycamore could make of it in his foggy state. He hurried into the bathroom, showered off the sensation that his skin was coated in cardboard, then dressed in clean clothes and wandered out of the room.

"Oh, where the hell am I?" he said aloud.

"This way, Professor," said a mild voice. He jumped; it was the footman from earlier that afternoon, apparently sent to make sure the scatterbrained academic didn't accidentally break something valuable or stroll out a window. "These big houses can be confusing if you're not used to them."

"C'est vrai," said Professor Sycamore, gratefully falling into step behind him. "I was hoping to navigate by the statues but they're all blindfolded."

The drawing room had been set up so that two people could take supper at the table which had previously held the boring formal documents. Lysandre was sitting at one place, his bowl and cutlery pushed to one side, talking to a tiny glowing thing on the tablecloth.

"Ciel, Lysandre," said Professor Sycamore, coming in and smiling a distracted thanks at the footman, who bowed and left. "What on earth is that? What are you doing?"

Lysandre looked up. "Ah, Professor. Come and admire what the finest minds at Fleur-de-Lis have created."

Professor Sycamore walked round the table to stand behind Lysandre. The tiny glowing thing was actually Xerosic, or at least Xerosic's head and shoulders, rendered about the size of Professor Sycamore's fist. He was being projected from a flat panel on the table.

"Wait! This is your Holo Caster?!"

"Yes, this is our Holo Caster," said Lysandre, his voice filled with lazy satisfaction. "It'll be commercially available within six months, and I can guarantee they will be considered indispensable within eight months."

"It's marvellous! Congratulations!" said Professor Sycamore. "And what is this? A screensaver?"

"No, Professor Sycamore," came a tinny voice from the holographic Xerosic, "this is a conversation in progress."

"Oh, my goodness, I do beg your pardon… Bon soir, Xerosic…"

"We're nearly done, Professor," said Lysandre. "Sit down. Someone will bring some soup up shortly. I hope you don't mind if I take this call?"

"It's your house and your futuristic super-invention," said Professor Sycamore with a shrug. "Please do as you like."

Lysandre looked down at Xerosic again, and said something in Ingrand. The scientist laughed and replied in the same language. They picked up their conversation, still in Ingrand, so Professor Sycamore couldn't understand a word of it, but he listened with the same intensity as if he were listening to Lysandre whispering endearments. He had always found Ingrand a stiff, clunky language, but Lysandre's voice made every syllable sound like a caress. When his voice raised slightly at the end of sentences, suggesting that he was asking Xerosic a question, Professor Sycamore felt a faint throbbing between his legs. Lysandre saying things in a language he couldn't understand was impossibly sexy.

He propped his chin up on his fist and scrutinised Lysandre as subtly as he could, occasionally glancing down to toy with his cutlery, to give the impression of one negligently fiddling while deep in thought. In fact he was taking advantage of this moment to recapture Lysandre in his mind's eye – the smooth white skin, the sharp, bright eyes, the martial profile, the vibrant red of his hair, a colour palette of high contrasts, extreme and refined. There was no trace of the graveside hysteria now, and Professor Sycamore was starting to wonder whether he had imagined it, or exaggerated it for some bizarre fantasy reason.

He thought he heard 'Geosenge', but Xerosic's accent, in his native language, was indecipherable. It could have been anything. He could have been talking about a make of marmalade for all Professor Sycamore knew.

The soup was brought in as the hologram of the head scientist and his boss were saying goodbye, which was, at least, a word Professor Sycamore could understand. He was startled when Xerosic added, in Kalosian, "And do pass on my congratulations to Professor Sycamore and his department. Dr Rose was thrilled by the Mega Evo news."

Lysandre's eyes flicked up and then back down again. "He hears you, Xerosic," he said in Kalosian.

"Send Bryony my love," Professor Sycamore called, and was satisfied to hear Xerosic snort impatiently before he hung up, and the hologram winked out of existence.

"Marvellous," said Professor Sycamore, poking the soup. "I'm sure managerial meetings will be a lot more fun now. You could hold them at midnight, from your bedrooms! Or in different parts of a maze! Thrilling. They'll be available in six months, you say?"

Lysandre flicked a switch on the Holo Caster. It made a soft 'boop' noise and powered down. "Why? Would you like one?"

"Oh yes, imagine the fun you could have," said Professor Sycamore, who was already imagining holding a tiny Lysandre in his hands and storing the idea away for future use. "They're quite big though, aren't they? I'll have to rearrange my pockets a bit. Maybe I'll have to stop carrying around spare tangerines for when I'm hungry."

"We could make them smaller," said Lysandre, then looked surprised at himself.

"You could? Could you put one in a watch, say?"

"I'm sure it's possible. I'd have to ask Amina Ndiaye," and here Lysandre's eyes briefly flattened and dulled, "who is on sabbatical at the moment, but she's the chief engineer on the project."

Professor Sycamore raised his eyebrows and smiled. "I know, Lysandre. I know her, remember. We all know each other."

Lysandre didn't respond to this. "Try the wine," he said instead, "I'm told I own the vineyard."

The dinner was so normal it was weird. Professor Sycamore felt as if one of their pleasant afternoon lunches from months beforehand had been cut out and lifted from the timeframe it stood in, and stitched into the raw wound of the mourning night. The drawing room they ate in seemed to exist like a closed globe, while the great world turned around it. Their talk was mild and friendly, the frisson the Professor always felt in Lysandre's presence stinging but bearable. There was only one moment when the stitching fluttered briefly loose, when they were talking about Mega Evolution.

"You'll be much in demand, I expect," Lysandre said.

"Well, I hope so," said Professor Sycamore, laughing, "but Professor Fortmaine will keep an eye on me and make sure I don't get out of hand."

"Is that what you want?" asked Lysandre, giving him a long, cold stare, and Professor Sycamore suddenly felt as if cracks were appearing in his façade, along his skin, in the walls, the world was crumbling. Lysandre was going to make that job offer again, only more clearly this time, and he'd have to give the speech earlier than he wanted to, breaking it off in no uncertain terms, _oh no please, just a little longer, just one more night_. But fortunately, Lysandre didn't pursue it, and the conversation moved on.

It was already quarter to eleven, and Professor Sycamore, sleepy again, was starting to discreetly yawn behind his dessert spoon, when Gagnon interrupted the meal.

"Professor," he said, giving Professor Sycamore a brusque nod, and then turned away from him.

You're the rudest butler I've ever met, thought Professor Sycamore. And that's probably a fact worth noting.

"Lysandre, it's nearly time," Gagnon said.

Lysandre held his wineglass up to the light and turned it thoughtfully in his fingers. "Je sais, Gagnon."

"You have to change."

"Je sais, Gagnon."

Gagnon seemed harried. "You understand… when we spoke yesterday…"

"I understand."

"They will not be ceremonial swords, Lysandre. You understand why this is."

"I understand."

Professor Sycamore watched this exchange with interest. He wasn't sure why the conversation was so serious, but he did know that he was getting a sword and that he'd had quite a lot of very good and worthwhile wine. Strangely, this combination didn't worry him the way it might have done a couple of hours ago.

Lysandre stood abruptly, and Professor Sycamore followed suit. Gagnon turned his glinting grin on the confused academic.

"You should change too, Professor," he said. "Épées à Minuit takes place outside, and it's a rough old night. Bring a warm coat. We'll meet you at the front entrance in half an hour."

xxxx

Professor Sycamore was pulling on a warm jumper and a buttoning his coat when he heard a soft thud at his bedroom door.

"Âllo?" he called. "Is someone out there?"

The soft thud came again. He opened the door. There was no one outside.

By his feet, there came a noise that was somewhere between a growl and a purr. He looked down.

"Oh, Théo!"

Lysandre's Litleo, which wasn't very little anymore (he's surely just on the brink of evolving, thought Professor Sycamore, look at that flame) blinked up at him. He was pacing up and down in front of the door and seemed agitated.

"Have you come to take me to the front door, mon petit chou-fleur?" he asked the Litleo. "You're a clever little cat, aren't you? You are the cleverest little cat."

The Litleo shook himself and trotted off along the corridor. Professor Sycamore went after it, pulling his Pokéballs off his belt to release his Braixen and his Fletchinder. He could do with the company. They materialised on the carpet in front of him and glanced around themselves briefly.

Their reactions to coming out of Pokéballs always fascinated Professor Sycamore (who did not usually keep them there). It took a second or two for them to adjust to being outside of their comfortable digitised spheres, and another second or so while they took stock of the situation – battle or no battle? If they were let out together, their reactions were curiously variable. Sometimes they would act as if he wasn't there at all, and walk right up to one another, for Vyvy to touch Beckett's head or Beckett to nibble on one of Vyvy's ears, in an obscure affectionate greeting. Other times their focus would be him entirely – they'd turn and fix him with unnerving twin stares, unmoving, waiting for him to give an order. It took the Professor's breath away every time. What were they, really? Oh, one was a Braixen and the other was a Fletchinder, but what were they? What was any Pokémon? Why did they care about humans at all? What were they thinking? What did they want?

On this occasion, Vyvy gave him one of her kind, faraway smiles and hurried after the Litleo. She walked beside him, one paw on his back. The Litleo barely acknowledged her but seemed content. Beckett flapped up to sit on his head.

"Ow," he said. "Don't dig your talons in, poulette."

Beckett shifted and gave his scalp a rather painful squeeze.

Gagnon – wrapped in a voluminous black cape – and the heralds were waiting outside the front door, along with a curled Arbok who surely belonged to the dark butler. None of the three spoke; they were staring out across the heath. Professor Sycamore followed their gaze. Towards the east, the distant glow of old-fashioned flame torches and a few Lampents lit a crowd of people – a far larger crowd than had been at the funeral.

"Bon soirée, Professor," said Gagnon, without looking at him. "I'm glad to see you've brought your Pokémon. Good strong Fire types too," he added approvingly.

He felt Beckett shift and the Fletchinder's face appeared upside down in front of his eyes. Who the fuck is this guy, his expression said.

"Ah, bon soirée Gagnon… messieurs… That's quite a crowd there. Are they all here for the, eh, for Épées à Minuit?"

"Yes," Gagnon replied, his eyes still fixed on the wavering lights. "Several guild members from the local town and the representatives of the municipal government, of course, all of whom are very annoyed that the citoyen-témoin was not chosen from their number." Professor Sycamore winced, but Gagnon spoke in a cruelly reasonable, conversational tone of voice. "And most of the old families have at least one delegate there. The old Comte was… respected. They would not pass up an opportunity to judge his heir."

"I'm sure he won't be found wanting," said Professor Sycamore, in a slightly louder voice than he had intended. He saw the edge of a smile on Gagnon's thin lips.

"Quite so. By the way, the château has an excellent mews and we have several fine bird Pokémon in the aviary. Perhaps your Fletchinder might like to meet some of our Fletchinders and Talonflames?"

Beckett's upside-down face appeared again. Are you fucking kidding me, his face said. He swung back upright and released an irritable puff of flame.

"Beckett," hissed Professor Sycamore. "What's gotten in to you?"

In fact all the Pokémon were acting strangely, and not just the unusually-aggressive Beckett. The Litleo had sat down, with Vyvy's paws buried in the fur of his back, and he kept shifting nervously and growling in the back of his throat. Vyvy's face was distant, darkly preoccupied. Even the Arbok flickered its tongue a little too often.

Professor Sycamore was starting to feel the effects of their anxiety. The night was very cold and sharp, and was sobering him up in an unpleasant way. The clouds hung low, completely covering the sky, so the night was starless and grim. Firelight reflected off them and coloured them an infernal orange.

"Gentlemen," said a voice behind them. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."

Professor Sycamore breathed out.

Lysandre stepped into his line of vision. He was dressed in black – neat black trousers and a black cape similar to Gagnon's, but shorter and cut in such a way that it swung dramatically from his shoulders where Gagnon's merely hung. His eyes were glittering, fixed on the flames on the heath. Théo stood up and hurried over to him, and Lysandre picked him up.

"You are getting too big for this, mon petit," he heard Lysandre say quietly, and the Litleo purred.

"The carriage is waiting, Lysandre," said Gagnon. "We need to be brisk now. It is getting closer to midnight."

"You must cross swords by the stroke of midnight," said the old herald sententiously.

Lysandre, still looking down at the Litleo, raised an eyebrow. "Thank you, monsieur. I am aware of the tradition."

"This way," said Gagnon, and swept off down the steps to the gravel drive. With every step he took, there was the ominous clank of metal, and Professor Sycamore thought: the swords, he has the swords under his cape. He felt Beckett spread his wings and leap into the air – the Fletchinder was flying straight out to the circle of firelight. His sudden absence brought the reality of the night home to the Professor. In a fit of nerves, he scooped Vyvy up and held her to his chest.

They all climbed into the carriage, which was much bigger than the funeral carriage and painted crimson, drawn by four Rapidash. It set off as soon as they were all settled.

No one spoke until the younger herald cleared his throat and said, "Well, Professor, this must be your first time at such a ceremony?"

"Yes, it is," said Professor Sycamore, throwing him a grateful look. "Lysandre explained it to me, a little, but I'm still quite in the dark."

Gagnon and the old herald were looking surly, and Lysandre was pointedly staring out the window, but the younger herald rallied magnificently. "I expect you're wondering why they have to battle with swords, rather than Pokémon?" he said.

"Why yes. Perhaps you could explain," said Professor Sycamore. He heard the old herald sigh.

"Well, it's all to do with the old feudal laws, see," said the younger herald, with a sort of cheerful desperation in his voice. "Anyone could own a Pokémon – although there did used to be laws restricting certain Pokémon to members of the court and the army – but only the ruling families were permitted to wear swords or duel. Besides, this was in less enlightened times, when Pokémon were considered to be lesser creatures, beasts of burden or accessories. Before Pokéballs were invented, and before psychosymbiosis was properly understood."

"So the new heir would challenge the petit générale to a duel, and become the head of the family and the grand générale if he won."

"Exactement!"

"What happened if he lost?"

At this Lysandre's eyes flickered briefly, and Gagnon laid his hand on the head of his Arbok, which was curled on the floor of the carriage, apparently to reassure himself that it was still there.

"Well, you see, it's not as bad as all that… It was really just a way of showing the military prowess of the heir, his fitness to lead an army into battle… The only reason that the petit générale would try to defeat the heir would be if he wasn't sure of his fitness as a leader, and wanted to test him."

"And if he lost?" asked Professor Sycamore insistently. He was started to feel nauseous with nerves. Something was going to go wrong, he was sure of it.

"They rarely _lost_, Professor. They might get a few more cuts than they'd like, but –"

"In those cases," the old herald interrupted, "it would be a fight to the death. Think about it, Professor. If the new heir was unfit to lead, he'd be a danger to the name of his family and to his men. So the petit générale would kill him in a fair duel. There were always more heirs, in those days. The court was… not as scattered as it is now."

"And the second would be the next in line," added Gagnon, in an oddly dull voice. "The citoyen-témoin is a relatively recent addition, added as a sop to the pushy middle classes. In those days, the second would step in and finish the duel."

"But that won't happen tonight!" said the younger herald, hastily waving his hands about. "There haven't been proper private armies in decades! It's just a ceremony. The swords are cork-tipped. Don't worry, Professor!"

The carriage stopped just short of the circle of firelight. No one got out.

"I see Degaule," said Lysandre. His voice was very quiet. "Further out on the heath. He's watching."

"As he should," said Gagnon, also very quiet. "As he should."

The door was pulled open by a member of the estate staff. There was a tense moment in which no one moved, and then Lysandre climbed down, the Litleo following him. There was a ripple of movement, a watchful susurration from the waiting crowd (about two hundred strong). The man they had been waiting for had arrived.

He still hasn't looked at me, thought Professor Sycamore. Not once.

The rest of the carriage descended. Lysandre was a silhouette against the lights of the torches. The scene could have been from two hundred years ago – the flames, the watching eyes, the red-headed man in a cape facing them under a low shadowy sky.

He felt someone touch his elbow and glanced down into the face of the younger herald.

"Don't be anxious," said the younger herald, who looked incredibly anxious. "You just need to take a sword from Gagnon when you're offered one, there's no formality, and then you just stand in the circle, behind Lysandre, while he mock-duels. Everything is fine."

Lysandre had stepped towards the waiting crowd, which parted to let him through. In the middle, there was a clearing of ground, glinting with dew. Here and there tangles of meadowflowers had been trampled flat, slick and dying.

Gagnon and the older herald followed Lysandre into the clearing. The younger herald, Professor Sycamore and the Pokémon went after them. Professor Sycamore's hands were deep in his coat pockets, so that no one could see his fingers shaking. This was not a crowd he could flirt with. Their waiting silence was sinister, faintly hostile – he felt as if they were entering the inner circle of a cult.

Gagnon threw his cape off and tossed it aside, where it was caught by waiting hands at the edge of the circle – some of the estate staff were there as well. Three swords glinted at his waist. He was wearing an old-fashioned white shirt, loose, open-nceked and full-sleeved, made of rough material. The orange-and-red flame insignia was clipped to his belt, like a medallion.

Lysandre shrugged himself out of his cape too, threw it aside, and took Professor Sycamore's breath away.

He wore the same simple shirt, and against the torches the outline of his body was clearly visible. He reached up to rub the back of his neck, easing some stiffness, preparing for what was to come, and the shirt shifted sideways, the wide neck momentarily revealing one perfect white shoulder. The sight of it made Professor Sycamore clench his fists in agitation. It seemed like too intimate a part for Lysandre to reveal, too tender and bruisable, and at the same time it looked as cold as marble and untouchable, something holy, only revealed to the most devout worshippers.

He still hasn't looked at me, thought Professor Sycamore, but what he is showing me, mon dieu, the things he is showing me.

"Pokémon to the edges, please," said the old herald, his voice firm and clear. "Seigneur… messieurs… take your places."

"We'll just stand here with the Pokémon," whispered the younger herald, gently towing Professor Sycamore backwards. Beckett was already waiting, shifting from foot to foot. Vyvy was playing with the twig in her tale. Théo's tail lashed from side to side. Their faces were empty.

Gagnon drew a sword from one of the scabbards at his waist, walked over, and offered it to Professor Sycamore. His face was preoccupied and he barely met the Professor's eye. Professor Sycamore took the grip, fumbled it, blushed and righted it in his hands, but Gagnon was already striding away to the centre of the clearing.

"Hold it downwards," whispered the younger herald. "The tip pointing towards the ground. You're doing fine."

The sword was thin but surprisingly heavy. The edge was dull grey and the tip was indeed corked. Professor Sycamore suspected he could do more damage smacking someone over the head with the pommel than he could with an actual slash.

Gagnon drew one of the other swords and, with a cold formality, offered it to Lysandre.

The blade gleamed. Its needle-thin end glinted in the torchlight, met by a matching glint in Gagnon's sudden grin.

"You –" Professor Sycamore's voice cracked, and he tried again. "You said the tips would be corked."

"I- I thought they would be," whispered the younger herald. Lysandre took the proffered sword with easy grace and tested the blade against his finger. Even from where he was standing, several feet away, Professor Sycamore saw the fine line of ruby-red well up. Lysandre smiled humorlessly.

Gagnon drew the final sword, undid the belt that held the scabbards, and cast them aside.

"En garde!" shouted the older herald, holding up one hand. A wristwatch glinted on his other arm, so incongruous in the setting that Professor Sycamore felt almost embarrassed by it. "Midnight strikes in seven… six… five… four… three… two… one…"

The blades whistled through the air and clashed with a noise that shook Professor Sycamore to the core of his being. The clouds were so low that he felt panicky and claustrophobic, as if they were standing in a cellar or a dungeon. But this was the heath, and the dungeon was the world.

Gagnon and Lysandre circled one another. In the time it took for Professor Sycamore to register this, Gagnon had darted forward and made a swipe at Lysandre's stomach, which he parried easily, and then another sudden thrust towards his shoulder, which he barely avoided.

The dark butler grinned again.

Lysandre's stepped nimbly to one side and made a sort of twisting cut towards Gagnon's waist, but Gagnon caught it calmly with the edge of his blade and flicked his wrist in a way that forced Lysandre backwards. Then he moved forwards in a blur of slahes, making Lysandre step further back.

Professor Sycamore's fingers were hooked in his mouth. He was biting on his knuckles so hard that one of his fingers had gone numb.

Lysandre caught Gagnon's blade on his own and, with a simple movement that must have been impossibly complex to execute, cut into the flesh on Gagnon's sword hand and inner arm. Gagnon drew back sharply and Lysandre threw himself forward into the advantage, then flinched, stumbled back, and brought his sword up to protect himself from another thrust from Gagnon.

As he moved, a bloody rose blossomed on the side of his shirt. Professor Sycamore gave a terrible groan. His stomach felt as if it had turned to ice.

"I didn't even see him do that," said the younger herald dazedly, as Lysandre and Gagnon's blades clashed again and again. "Did you see him do that?"

"Nnnn," said Professor Sycamore. The loose white shirt was now stuck fast to Lysandre's body on one side, flattening against him as the blood flowed. Gagnon's arm was dripping too, but his grip was steady.

The next cut was Gagnon's again, and this time it was slow enough to see how it happened. Lysandre slashed at him, rather clumsily, and he ducked smartly out of the way, the very tip of his sword catching Lysandre's thigh. Professor Sycamore saw the material rip and the briefest glimpse of Lysandre's bare skin before the blood welled up and soaked into the black trousers. Lysandre managed to give Gagnon a glancing cut to the upper arm, but it didn't even slow the dark butler down.

He's losing, thought Professor Sycamore.

"Is he going to lose?" he asked the younger herald. His voice didn't sound like his own; it sounded like he had swallowed glass and was trying to speak through it.

"I don't- I don't know. This shouldn't be happening," muttered the younger herald. "I don't know what's happening."

Professor Sycamore looked at the other herald. The old man's face was stunned. He hadn't been expecting this either.

"They can't possibly be- I mean, it's not like you're able to step in, I- this doesn't make any _sense…_"

Professor Sycamore heard Lyandre gasp and looked wildly round again to see Gagnon, his face screwed-up and set, tug his sword free with a sickening wet noise. There was a brief spurt of blood that made Professor Sycamore actually retch, and then the redness ran unstoppably down Lysandre's side. Gagnon had run the blade through the flesh at Lysandre's waist.

He thought he saw Lysandre move upwards, but then he felt the cold dampness on his kneecaps and realised he'd sunk to the dew-covered ground, his useless sword in front of him. He could see a splash of blood on the ground, impossibly puddle-like, far too much to have come from a human body. He heard a sort of scream, wondered if it had come from him, but then realised it was Théo, making a disturbingly human noise. The Litleo was struggling against the joint grip of Vyvy and Gagnon's Arbok, trying to throw himself towards his master. Vyvy's eyes were filled with tears.

Gagnon paused for just a second but it was long enough for Lysandre to take a wild slash at his chest. A slice of red appearing in his shirt, spread and flattened. He was prepared for the next swipe and parried it, forcing Lysandre back once more.

Professor Sycamore felt the younger herald's hands under his armpits, pulling him upright. The younger herald was only a little man but Professor Sycamore felt too limp to fight him. When he took his arm and put it around his rather narrow shoulders, Professor Sycamore felt close to tearful.

"I don't know what's happening," repeated the younger herald, distressed. "I don't know what's happening."

"He'll kill him," said Professor Sycamore hoarsely, then regretted the moment he'd said it, because saying it made the possibility solidify. Then, with new, vicious determination, he added, "I'll kill him if he does."

The younger herald tensed under his arm.

"I will," said Professor Sycamore, his voice low, shaking. "I'll kill him. Why are we just standing here watching this? I'll kill him. I need a proper fucking sword."

"They'll kill you if you try," whispered the younger herald, and indicated the crowd. Professor Sycamore had almost forgotten they were there. "The aristocrats, especially, I think they… I think some of them were expecting this, I… they'll crush you."

Lysandre's movements had become loose, sloppy. He wasn't attacking at all any more; all of his energy and concentration was focused on not being cut. Gagnon was forcing him inexorably back and back. The dark butler's lips were sucked in and his eyes were appalled, as if his movements and his mind were sundered from one another, as if he wished he could stop but couldn't stop himself.

Professor Sycamore was too overcome to speak. His lips formed the words _let them crush me_ but his vocal cords wouldn't cooperate. _He is mine._ But nothing, no sound came.

He looked down again, saw that frightening deep splash of blood. It was, he realised, soaking into the tangled, trampled remains of a patch of meadowflowers. Bloodied petals and twisted stems.

Lysandre was moving backwards oddly, in a sort of stumbling zigzag. It looked as if he was fighting to stay upright. But then Professor Sycamore realised he was moving closer and closer to the blood-slicked meadowflowers.

_It seems that people like to believe they are winning when they have captured the most pieces. But the endgame is always decided by the moves that were made covertly, the hidden strategies, the pieces your opponent did not notice being used. Secrecy. Secret advantages._

Gagnon's eyes were fixed on Lysandre, on the sword, on his face, on his arms, on his body, because he was a good swordfighter, because he knew that he had to watch everything Lysandre did. That, perhaps, was why he was not watching his own feet. And given how fast he was moving, how ferociously, this was a mistake.

As he darted forward once more, one of his feet slid through the mess of blood and meadowflowers and caught. He was too shocked to even make a noise as he slipped and stumbled forwards. It was only a second that he let his guard down, but that was enough for Lysandre.

There was a noise like nothing Professor Sycamore had ever heard before. That was because he'd never heard a man push a sword clean through another man's shoulder.

Gagnon gave a shout of pain and dropped his sword. Lysandre pulled his sword back and there was another horrendous fountaining of blood, which Gagnon tried to stem by squeezing his shoulder with his other hand. As he dropped to his knees, Lysandre brought his bloodied sword up, so that the very tip was against Gagnon's throat.

There was a flash of blue fire in the distance. Degaule, the lonely observer, had seen the outcome of the duel.

The look on Gagnon's face was the strangest Professor Sycamore had ever seen. It was contorted with pain, tight with fury, but the man's eyes glowed. In his eyes, there was such pride, pride and love and relief.

Lysandre was breathing hard. In the violent silence of the night, his breath was the only real sound. Until Gagnon smiled another glinting smile and said,

"Vraiment, vous êtes le Comte. Vive le Comte."

"Say it again," said Lysandre, with dangerous harmonics in his voice.

"Vive le Comte."

"Say it again!"

"VIVE LE COMTE!"

The cry was taken up by the crowd, rising into the air with the edges of the flames. "Vive le Comte!" It was like a chant, a battle cry. "Vive le Comte! Vive le Comte!"

And finally, Lysandre turned around and looked at Professor Sycamore, his face wild, his eyes flashing, wearing something like a smile and something like a snarl. Professor Sycamore felt his gaze as surely as if he'd felt Lysandre's sword go through his heart.

Against the low, stained clouds, the shouting crowd drawing in (pushing at the Professor's back, forcing him forwards), Lysandre's shirt torn and blood-drenched, his hair was lit by the torchlight so it looked like a halo, and he was an angel, a warrior angel, the bringer of light, the angel of the morning.


	9. Fire - Part II

The mythical surreality of the night scene was fixed for several seconds until the younger herald (still doggedly at Professor Sycamore's side) shouted, "Where's the doctor?"

As soon as he shouted it, a flutter of something – call it compassion, call it fear, or just call it humanity – ran through the crowd. "Au secours!" someone shouted. "We need a doctor!" Because, of course, the outcome of the whole rite had been two men bleeding profusely and, if not treated very soon, possibly fatally.

"We have to get to the house with the Comte and Gagnon," said the younger herald urgently, standing on his toes to say it into Professor Sycamore's ears. The crowd were moving around them, shoving and bumping. Lysandre and Gagnon had been swallowed up by the stumbling mess of humanity.

"Yes, yes, of course, he's hurt," said Professor Sycamore, who still felt very unsteady.

"And you're the citoyen-témoin, you have to be present as a witness," said the younger herald. "Sorry," he added, when he saw Professor Sycamore's expression.

Professor Sycamore heard a loud bird call above them and looked up to see Beckett, flapping furiously. The Fletchinder swooped and sped off in the direction of the château, then performed a wide circle and swooped back.

"I think he's trying to tell you something," said the herald, then went 'oof!' as someone elbowed him sharply in the back. Professor Sycamore stumbled into someone else.

"Professor Sycamore!" shouted a voice from the edge of the crowd. It was the footman from earlier that evening; evidently he had been assigned the task of looking after the citoyen-témoin. "This way, Professor! We've got the carriage waiting!"

The younger herald and the Professor fought their way out of the crowd. Beckett had landed on the roof of the carriage and was looking impatient. Professor Sycamore was relieved to see Vyvy there as well, and a few other Pokémon he didn't recognise – estate Pokémon, presumably. The Rapidash drawing the carriage were stamping nervously.

A head poked out of the window of the carriage. It was the old herald, his ridiculous ceremonial hat in disarray, his collar rucked. "Get in," he barked.

The younger herald obediently climbed in, but Professor Sycamore froze. "But Lys- but the Comte? And Gagnon? Where are they?"

He felt a gentle pressure in the small of his back as the footman pushed him forward. "They went in the car, Professor. They'll be at the château by now."

"What car?" asked Professor Sycamore stupidly. Vyvy darted ahead of him and leapt into the carriage with the other Pokémon.

"We had a car standing by. We weren't going to rely on antiquated transport to get the Comte back to the château, Professor!" The footman gave him a much firmer push and Professor Sycamore finally got in, barely avoiding having the door slammed on his arse. The footman jumped up onto the running board and banged on the side of the carriage. The Rapidash set off at a nervous semi-canter.

"It looks hellish out there," said the younger herald, craning round to see the crowd out of the window. "They're all still pushing about and shouting." It was true; the faint cries of 'Vive le Comte!' could still be heard.

"Perfectly normal crowd reaction," said the old herald. "They'll shove each other and yell until someone with half a brain realises they need a leader, and will lead them down to the town, where there's a big outdoor banquet being cooked. Hog roasts. Barrels of beer. That sort of thing."

"The aristocrats too?" asked Professor Sycamore, surprised.

"Oh yes, although I imagine the better restaurants in the town square all have late night bookings tonight as well," said the old herald grimly. He seemed displeased with something, but Professor Sycamore was barely paying him attention. He was thinking, they had a car standing by, because they knew that they would need to get Lysandre and that horrible butler back to the château quickly. They knew this was going to happen. They had a doctor standing by. They _knew_. Why?

"This is most irregular," said the old herald. "Very worthy and traditional of course, but… irregular."

Professor Sycamore saw the younger herald clench his jaw in irritation.

"Your Fletchinder's well ahead of us, Professor!" shouted the footman through the window, against the sound of the rumbling carriage. "He looks annoyed!"

Ordinarily, Professor Sycamore would have replied, "He always looks annoyed!" but his heart wasn't in it. His heart wasn't anywhere – he suspected Lysandre had taken it with him back to the château, and that was why he could feel nothing but low, miserable panic filling his chest.

They pulled up on the gravel and Professor Sycamore was out the carriage before it had even come to a halt, scattering stones as he staggered and ran for the entrance. He heard the rhythmic crunch of running feet as the younger herald and the footman caught up with him.

"Which way?" he shouted over his shoulder.

"Follow me!" the footman called, and bounded up the steps to the entrance two at a time.

They headed downwards, into the cool stone of the basement floors.

"They took him to the kitchens?" asked Professor Sycamore. There was sweat rolling down his neck into his collar, sweat that only had a little to do with the exertion of running.

"No, although the kitchens are on this floor," said the footman. "This is a warlord château, Professor. There are rooms down here whose entire purpose was to house convalescing members of the private army. Most of them have been adapted for other uses or bricked up, but," his eyes gleamed, "we keep a few in their original condition."

The footman's enthusiasm left Professor Sycamore cold. He turned to look for the younger herald, hoping for a more comforting face. He was walking slightly behind them, wheezing heavily.

"Are you alright?" he asked, torn between wanting to help the poor man and tear straight ahead to wherever Lysandre was.

"Asthma," said the younger herald shortly. He flapped a hand impatiently, indicating that the Professor should go on ahead. Professor Sycamore gratefully hurried on.

There was indeed a scrubbed, well-lit, vaulted room that looked like a two hundred-year-old hospital ward in the basement. The room had stunted look, as if it once stretched much further but had, in more recent years, been split into a series of separate rooms – the vaulted ceiling, hung with old-fashioned lamps that had been adapted to take electricity, disappeared abruptly in a plain, whitewashed modern wall. The other three walls were heavy stone and old wood, but there was, bizarrely, linoleum on the floor.

There were also six bed with metal bedframes and (Professor Sycamore couldn't help noticing) rubber undersheets, presumably to catch all that blood. Two of them were very bloodied, and that was because they held Lysandre and Gagnon.

There was a doctor bending over Gagnon, who was swearing in an interesting mixture of Kalosian and some northern dialect Professor Sycamore didn't have sufficient interest to attempt to identify. His shoulder was being treated. A syringe lay discarded on the floor beside the doctor, but whatever it was had apparently not started working yet.

Lysandre was sitting up on another bed, his face very pale. He was stripped to his waist and held his injured leg out in front of him. There was blood everywhere. Another doctor, or perhaps an assistant of some sort, was trying to stem the flow from the injury at his waist, by far the most severe one.

Professor Sycamore remembered, with queasy shame, that he'd had a stupid little hurt/comfort fantasy about Lysandre swordfighting in the car ride to Calincourt. How long ago that seemed now, and how unbelievably fucking stupid. There was nothing romantic about the sight of Lysandre badly injured and covered in blood. It was just distressing, horribly distressing and frightening.

His shoulders were jumping and his chest was tight; he realised he was very quietly dry-heaving, with his mouth clamped shut so that no one could hear him. He thought he would faint, he thought he might start yelling and making a scene. He couldn't bear it, he realised. He couldn't bear seeing Lysandre this badly damaged.

Pray Arceus, he thought, that Lysandre never puts himself in harm's way again, how can I stand it, I think I'll go mad, oh god.

He heard the clatter of footsteps behind him, the sharp hiss of an inhaler, and knew the young herald had come in. There was distant shouting too, suggesting that the older herald was on his way. It made Lysandre look up, and for the second time that evening his gaze pierced Professor Sycamore like a sword.

"You," he said. There was something strange and choked in his voice.

Professor Sycamore wanted to say Lysandre's name, say anything really, but he was still trying to control the dry-heaving and couldn't open his mouth.

The doctor bending over Gagnon looked round. She was a woman in her mid-forties, with very round, owlish glasses and a pissed-off expression. "You're the citoyen-témoin? Here to ensure there's no foul play? Make yourself useful and help my colleague with the Comte."

"I don't want him here," said Lysandre. He'd looked away, was staring down at the wound in his thigh.

The doctor clicked her tongue. "It has been impressed on me _at length_, Seigneur, that the citoyen-témoin has to be here, in case we are secretly assassins instead of medical professionals." She gave Professor Sycamore a brief look filled with poison and turned back to Gagnon, whose bald head was shining with sweat.

"I don't want him here," Lysandre repeated. His tongue sounded a little thick – evidently he was halfway between the injected anaesthetic kicking in and the pain eating away at his mind. "I want him to leave. Now."

This last word was said louder than the rest of the sentence and echoed against the stone walls.

Professor Sycamore had stopped dry-heaving, but only through shock. The cold sleet of humiliation was flooding the inside of his veins.

"Get out," muttered Lysandre, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Professor Sycamore felt a small hand between his shoulder blades. The younger herald had stepped closer to him. With a preoccupied kindness that brought tears to his eyes, the herald's hand drop from his back and gently pressed one of his uselessly dangling hands.

"You! Témoin!" snapped the doctor again. "Don't just stand there!"

The other doctor, an exhausted-looking man with grey-brown eyes, nodded at Professor Sycamore, who found himself being steered towards the bed by the herald.

"Get out," Lysandre said, almost inaudible. Even his lips were pale. There was a smear of blood on one of them, where he had bitten through the skin in his agonies.

Professor Sycamore couldn't look at him, except in glimpses. He took in the still-perfect shoulders, the leonine mass of flame-red hair on a broad, hard chest, the alabaster clarity of the skin, the graceful taper of his figure, the blood, _the blood_, in a series of nightmarish impressions. Lysandre was so beautiful. It was so awful.

"I need you to apply pressure to this wound, Professor," said the doctor, indicating the long dripping scar that ran half the length of Lysandre's ribcage. "Then I can see to this, eh, rather dramatic perforation."

This was the wound at the waist – Professor Sycamore saw enough to see that the flesh there was ragged and torn before he very quietly retched again, and sank to his knees.

"Good, thank you," said the doctor. Professor Sycamore's collapse had brought him to exactly the right level to press a compact against the wound; the doctor was holding it in place, waiting for the Professor to take over. Lysandre was still staring intently at his leg.

"I don't want you here," said Lysandre, his voice low and harsh. "Go away."

"I need someone to apply pressure, Seigneur," said the doctor wearily. "And Monsieur Gagnon was insistent on limiting access to you both. I couldn't even bring a nurse with me. I couldn't even bring my Chansey! If you please, monsieur," he added, to Professor Sycamore.

The Professor lifted a shaking hand and pressed it against the loose dressing.

"Don't," said Lysandre, his voice starting to slur as the painkillers kicked in.

"You need to press harder than that, monsieur," said the doctor. He was doing something horrible-looking involving suturing and cleaning that Professor Sycamore was determinedly not looking at.

"Don't," said Lysandre, and this was scarcely above a whisper. There was such an expression on his face, twisted and suffering, that Professor Sycamore wondered whether the anaesthetic was actually working. "Don't. Don't touch me."

This was exactly the thing Professor Sycamore had always dreaded hearing. His arm jerked involuntarily; he wanted to snatch his hand away, stab the palm with a knife in an outbreak of violent shame.

He looked down at the floor, but it swam out of focus as he teared up. He kept his eyes stretched wide so that the tears would fall down directly onto the linoleum. They hit it with a dumbly prosaic patter. Tap, tap, tap. His head was hanging down – he couldn't look up, didn't dare, couldn't bear it.

He heard Lysandre breathe in sharply and snarl.

"My apologies, Comte," said the doctor. "I'm afraid you'll feel this through the anaesthetic."

"What is it?" asked the younger herald. Professor Sycamore had quite forgotten he was there. The man's voice was wavering, uncertain. He was a ceremonial figure in a silly hat, he hadn't signed up for this much gore.

"Specially extracted and treated Magcargo slime," said the doctor. "Devilishly expensive stuff, because it's so difficult to harvest, but it works miracles. It will cauterize the wound and form a protective seal that ought to last a couple of days. After that we'll have to revert to treating the wound the old-fashioned way; too much Magcargo extract has some rather peculiar side effects."

"It burns," said Lysandre levelly.

"Yes. I'm sorry," said the doctor, and he must have applied more, because the next thing that Professor Sycamore heard was Lysandre groaning in a way that made his heart sink, his throat close up and (to his everlasting shame, his eternal self-hatred) his cock harden.

He shut his eyes and several more tears ran down his face. Under his hand, he felt Lysandre struggling to breathe normally. Desire and dread rendered him quite useless. He kept his head hanging down so no one could see him crying.

"That should be fine," said the doctor, who sounded stressed. "Just don't exert yourself, my lord. The seal will be waterproof for about forty-eight hours, but I wouldn't advise going swimming or anything like that."

"Why not?" asked Lysandre, rather sulkily. "I am the Comte, you know."

Professor Sycamore wiped the tears from his face using his shoulder, as he was unable to move his hands. An appalling, soul-sucking affection had filled him when Lysandre spoke.

I forget sometimes, he thought, that you're not even thirty yet, you're still a young man. And you're being rendered stupid by painkillers too, I can't believe you just said you'll go swimming if you want to because you're the Comte.

"You can let go now, monsieur," said the doctor. "I'll take it from here."

Professor Sycamore pulled his hand back and breathed out. He felt the herald's hands on his shoulders and, instinctively, looked up. Lysandre, ashen and drawn, was looking down at him with a sort of seeking curiosity, but as soon as he caught Professor Sycamore's eye, he turned away sharply, his jawline hardening, and Professor Sycamore stayed sat on the floor, imagining sword pinning him through every limb, through the stomach, through the head, punishing him for what he was, what he was becoming.

xxxx

The night passed in a grotesque blur. The old herald had turned up eventually, and there had been some sort of argument between the two heralds, but Professor Sycamore was too consumed by his own self-loathing to really notice. But Gagnon seemed satisfied. In terrible pain, and swearing a lot, but satisfied.

Lysandre hadn't looked at him again, or acknowledged his presence in any way, not even to tell him to leave. He'd waited for another hour (on the floor – no one stopped him) until some unspoken agreement was reached by the dark butler, the herald, the doctors and the Comte, and then he was taken back up to his room.

He had flopped onto the bed, expecting to fall asleep immediately, but in fact he had started sobbing uncontrollably, his face in the pillow, for goodness knows how long – he passed into unconsciousness while he was still crying.

He had bad dreams.

In his dreams, he imagined shooting Lysandre full of arrows. Every time an arrow pierced Lysandre's flesh, Lysandre moaned and writhed, his hands bound behind him, tied to a post, his tongue wetting his lips. In his dreams, he licked every arrowhead before he slotted it into his bow, and he knew that doing this would mean Lysandre would feel both pleasure and pain when the arrow thudded into his flesh. In his dreams, Lysandre was naked and he could see him getting harder even as he bled.

In his dreams, Lysandre kept begging him for more.

He woke up to find that he had been rubbing himself through the bedsheets, the flat of his palm stroking the length of his erection under the covers, his hips lifting slightly. He had just enough time to throw the covers off himself and hastily cup a hand around the head of his cock before he came, making animal noises through gritted teeth.

A melancholy half-light, the best that the sun could do in these cloud-covered days, was creeping through the curtains.

I am sick, thought Professor Sycamore, then: I feel sick.

He got up, wandered into the bathroom, scraped the spunk off his palm with some toilet paper, then knelt carefully down and was sick into the toilet.

He stayed with his head down after he was done, panting, his forehead on his arm. He was trying to form coherent thoughts, to put his unhappiness into words, but there was nothing but putrid mist in his head. He felt unclean.

He took a shower but it didn't really help.

There was a knock on his door while he was getting dressed. It was a rather feeble knock, as if the person knocking wanted to be acknowledged but was embarrassed about the whole situation. It was the knock equivalent of an 'um'.

Professor Sycamore opened the door while he was buttoning up his shirt.

The younger herald was standing outside the door, shorn of his ceremonial garb. Without the hat, the collars and cuffs, the strange jacket, the sash, the breeches, and so on, he was actually quite a good-looking young man, with sandy hair and slim shoulders.

"Um," he said, then stepped around Professor Sycamore and into the room.

Professor Sycamore did the rest of his buttons up and looked at him blankly, until the herald sat on his bed and started awkwardly swinging his legs. Then he thought: mon dieu, have I accidentally pulled?

"Bonjour," mumbled the herald.

"Bonjour, eh," Professor Sycamore began, then realised he still had no idea what the herald's name was. "Is everything alright?"

The young herald sighed. "No, Professor," he said, "I don't think everything is alright." He chewed on one of his nails, then looked up at the Professor. "About last night," he began.

Professor Sycamore made a sort of vague arm movement, which he hoped communicated a complete dismissal of the subject, plus his eagerness not to talk about it ever again.

"It was planned, you know," said the herald. "They planned it." He took a deep breath. "Something is going on."

Oh, bless you, thought Professor Sycamore.

"And I think you might be part of it," added the herald.

Professor Sycamore shrugged. "I'm just the witness. I don't see how it could have anything to do with me. You saw how the Come dismissed me," he added, and couldn't stop the bitterness creeping into his voice.

"I know, but I think you're going to be dragged into it anyway," said the herald gloomily. "I just… _have a feeling_."

Professor Sycamore sighed. "What's your name?"

The herald blinked, startled, then blushed. "Roland," he said. "I'm sorry, I forgot you wouldn't have known."

"Well, Roland," said the Professor, "is there anything I can do to help?"

At this, Roland flushed a deep pink, all the way to his throat. "Oh, no, Professor – "

"Call me Gus."

"Oh, er, Gus," said the herald, blushing deeper still. "No, I came up here to let you know that if there was anything _I_ could do to help…" He trailed off, and looked at his feet.

Professor Sycamore walked up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Merci," he said simply. "You have been an invaluable help to me already. I will not forget the kindness you showed me, when you could have been patronising me like everyone else."

Roland smiled, but he still looked anxious. "Yes, but, I mean… later." He took a deep breath. "When whatever else they've been planning happens."

"Who?"

"The old order."

Professor Sycamore frowned. "You mean the aristocrats?"

"And their supporters, yes. Something is dreadfully wrong, Gus." He faltered over the name, blushing again. "That awful butler could have killed the last du Feu. For what? It doesn't make sense. Unless something else is afoot." His mouth snapped into a thin, straight line, suddenly determined. "I may only be a herald, but I'm a fixture at the court. I hear things. They think I'm on their side, you know. I'm not sure I am."

"Whose side are you on?" asked Professor Sycamore.

"Yours," said Roland, and blushed again. "Not because– I mean, of course because– I mean, I won't let them just brush people aside. I won't let them get away with, um, with anything they might be, um, planning," he finished lamely.

Professor Sycamore sat down on the bed beside him. He suddenly felt very old and tired. "Why did you become a herald, Roland?"

"My father is the Duc du Caillou," said Roland. Professor Sycamore's eyebrows shot up his forehead.

"Wait, _you're_ aristocracy as well?"

Roland smiled with his mouth alone; his eyes suddenly looked sharp. "No, Professor. I am not aristocracy. My mother is only a seamstress."

"Oh," said Professor Sycamore, then, "Ah."

Roland shrugged and swung his legs again. "A herald is a good halfway point for a bastard son," he explained, without rancour, his eyes softening.

They looked at one another for a few seconds, then Roland smiled hopelessly. "We'll be leaving soon. In fact we should have already left, but I wanted to come and talk to you. And I think you're expected for breakfast, that footman will be along shortly, I saw him on my way up here. I just wanted to," and he waved his arms, trying to communicate whatever his good-hearted intent had been.

"You're a good person," said Professor Sycamore fervently. "Far too good for this job."

Roland laughed uncertainly. "It's in my blood, though," he said. "Whether I like it or not."

He stood up and dug around his pockets, before producing a scrap of paper. It had an email address on it. Professor Sycamore took it.

"Just remember," said Roland, "if there's anything I can do to help… if you ever need any information… or anything, anything at all…"

Professor Sycamore smiled. "Thank you again, Roland. Come and see me some time at the École. I think it would interest you."

"It's been a pleasure meeting you, Gus," said Roland, shy again, and leaned down to kiss Professor Sycamore lightly on both cheeks. "Au revoir."

He slipped out the door, leaving Professor Sycamore sitting on the bed, staring at the scrap of paper.

About thirty seconds later, there was another knock at the door. He stood up and opened it.

"Come to make sure I don't get lost again?" he said conversationally to the footman, who was well-trained enough not to look surprised.

"Indeed, Professor," he said. "Please follow me. The Comte is waiting for you."

xxxx

Breakfast was in one of the formal dining rooms, which Professor Sycamore found faintly chilling, although he couldn't say why. The new Comte du Feu was seated at the table reading a newspaper, his croissant in the process of being dipped into a bowl of coffee. By the look on the croissant, which was disintegrating slowly, he had been holding it there for quite some time.

Professor Sycamore stared at him. He didn't know what to say. Even 'bonjour' seemed out of the question. He thought about his dream and shuddered with revulsion at himself. He remember Lysandre's soft voice, cracked and broken, his face as he said, "Don't touch me." And now here he was, eating a croissant and frowning deeply at something he was reading, something Professor Sycamore had seen him do dozens of times over the course of their friendship.

"Lysandre," he said huskily.

Lysandre looked up. "Ah, Professor," he said, in a voice so conspicuously normal that Professor Sycamore felt completely thrown off balance. "Bonjour. I trust you slept well?"

"I," said Professor Sycamore, then gave up.

"Please sit down," said Lysandre, nodding towards the place set next to him (and not, Professor Sycamore noticed with fruitless relief, at the opposite end of the long, linen-draped table). "There's coffee and croissants and some fruit- oh dear."

Lysandre had just noticed his croissant. He lifted it out. It dripped, then the saturated end fell off with a sad clop into the bowl. They stared at the ripples. Lysandre cleared his throat.

"I've been distracted," he said, firmly, "by the bad news that there's been an oil spill off the western coast."

"Oh, mon dieu, how awful," said Professor Sycamore, settling into Conversation Autopilot. "Is anyone hurt?"

"No humans, unfortunately" said Lysandre, with a trace of nastiness. "But the damage to the local Pokémon and their habitats is vast."

"Awful," repeated Professor Sycamore, sitting down and pouring himself some coffee. "An accident, I suppose?"

Lysandre folded the newspaper briskly. "It looks to me more like laziness and stupidity, a human error that could easily have been avoided. But it is not really breakfast conversation. How are you feeling, after last night?"

This was said in the same easy, pleasant tone of voice as Lysandre might have asked, "Would you like some orange juice?" Professor Sycamore had to pause for several seconds, just to check that he had heard the question right. While he was silent, Lysandre said,

"I may have been a little brusque with you."

Professor Sycamore stared at his reflection in the coffee bowl. "A little," he conceded weakly.

"I hope you will accept my apologies," said Lysandre, and Professor Sycamore noticed he had slipped into his haughty monotone, the voice of a man reading a pre-prepared speech off the inside of his skull. "I was in a great deal of pain and I did not think it was…. appropriate for you to be there. I believe I failed to think through my choice when I asked you to be my citoyen-témoin. That was not something you… should have been exposed to."

Professor Sycamore said, "Well," but had nothing to add.

"Indeed, I imagine there will have to be a," Lysandre pursed his lips thoughtfully, "a, ah, _reassessment_ of certain elements of our relationship now that I am the Comte."

A bright, needle-sharp pain flared up in Professor Sycamore's breastbone, spreading through his entire chest and stomach, fastening around his throat. He had been lifting the coffee bowl to his lips, and now he put it down, because his fingers were shaking so much.

"Of course, it is still vitally important that Fleur-de-Lis and the evolutionary biology department continue their mutually beneficial working relationship," Lysandre said. "Unfortunately, I will have to play a less active role. Xerosic has already partly taken over the program, and I am sure he will only complain for a few weeks if I hand over the entire thing."

"Oh," said Professor Sycamore quietly.

"And I'll be spending more time at Calincourt, of course," continued Lysandre. "I have the other project too, the Geosenge Town project. You remember, I mentioned this to you…"

Oh merde, thought Professor Sycamore. Here it comes. Here it is. The beginning of the end.

"I'm sorry if I said anything," Lysandre paused, "_unsuitable_ at the time. I hope I did not give the impression that I was trying to draw you into a conflict-of-interest situation."

That is exactly what you did, thought Professor Sycamore furiously. And you _know_ it too. Why are you treating me like an idiot? What the fuck do you think you're doing? Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this to me?! Connard! Doesn't your existence punish me enough?

It was the angriest thing he'd thought in months, and, in a way, the most positive. If he'd asked himself, an hour ago, what he'd do if Lysandre unexpectedly tried to freeze him out of his life, he would have imagined himself taking the blows, taking his hurt home, crying for the rest of his life. Ending it was what he had planned to do, after all, though somehow it was so much worse to know that Lysandre had been planning it to, for entirely different (perhaps, entirely and tragically the opposite) reason.

But he was annoyed now, and so he snapped,

"Lysandre, did you or did you not get stabbed by your butler last night?"

Lysandre blinked, then sat back and gave him a long, cool stare. "I did."

"And have your stab wounds miraculously healed overnight?"

"They did not."

"Well then," said Professor Sycamore irritably, "don't you think there are more important things to be talking about than project management? You didn't invite me here as a colleague, you invited me here as a friend. You admitted that yourself!"

This last sentence was uttered in a voice suddenly filled with pleading, almost more of a question than a statement – Professor Sycamore had to fight the urge to add, 'didn't you?' to the end of it. The fury which was roused in him just as abruptly went out, and he subsided.

Lysandre didn't say anything at all. Professor Sycamore took a sheepish sip of coffee.

"Perhaps I should leave after breakfast," said Professor Sycamore, at the same time as Lysandre said,

"I'm sorry."

They fell silent again, awkward and dumb.

Professor Sycamore tipped his bowl from side to side and watched his reflection waver. He glanced round when he heard Lysandre sigh, softly. The Comte was staring into his bowl as well, his expression faintly harassed.

"Ça va?" he asked automatically, like a moron.

Lysandre gave him a sad smile. "Just arguing with myself," he said. Professor Sycamore shut his eyes momentarily; the smile had been almost as painful to witness as the conversation that had preceded it. He opened them again to see Lysandre stretching his arms above his head, then flinching and wincing when the pain in his side stopped him.

"You're still in pain," he said, unable to keep the tenderness out of his voice. "Didn't the doctors leave you any painkillers?"

"Oh, they did," said Lysandre. "But I'm not taking them."

"What! Whyever not?"

"They make me think loosely," said Lysandre, in a final tone of voice. "Look, Professor… don't leave after breakfast. You still haven't seen the rest of the estates. Let's go for a walk down to the lakes."

"That would be nice," said Professor Sycamore carefully. His heart was shrieking madly. He had no idea what was happening. Are you breaking up with me or what? he thought.

"After all, I am not sure when we will have a chance to see one another again, socially," said Lysandre, and Professor Sycamore thought, ah. "Let's make the most of it, mon ami."

Professor Sycamore just nodded.

"You're not eating," Lysandre observed.

"I'm not hungry."

"No, neither am I." Lysandre pushed his bowl away. "I'll ask one of the servants to make up a, well, a picnic, shall we say. It's still quite warm at this time of year. And the walk will help us work up an appetite."

"That would be nice," Professor Sycamore repeated blankly, although in truth he thought he would never have an appetite ever again.

xxxx

The lakes of the estate were out towards the eastern end of the heath, edged by a dense forest. As Lysandre and Professor Sycamore stepped out, they saw a group of Fletchinders and Talonflames circling above the château, in a perfectly coordinated spiral.

"Estate birds," said Lysandre, watching them thoughtfully. "I own them now."

Professor Sycamore shaded his eyes with his hand and looked upwards. There was one Fletchinder which had broken away from the circle, and as he watched, it rose and rose above the flock, only to dive sharply.

"Oh, look," he said, pointing, then immediately regretted it, because he'd recognised the Fletchinder at the same moment it went 'paf!' in the back of a Talonflame, throwing it off balance.

"Isn't that your Fletchinder?" asked Lysandre.

"Putain," muttered Professor Sycamore. Beckett was now tauntingly fluttering around another Fletchinder, tugging at its tail with his foot even as they flew. "I'm calling him back to his Pokéball. I'm calling him back to his Pokéball _right now_."

"No, don't," said Lysandre, who sounded amused. "Let him be. It will shake those buzzards up a bit. He's a very talented flier, Professor, not many birds can keep up with the du Feu aviary."

"He's a pain in the arse, is what he is," said Professor Sycamore darkly. "Do you know were Vyvy is? They rarely separate when I leave them alone together."

"She's with Théo," said Lysandre. "She has been very kind to him. He was… very upset. He didn't fall asleep until dawn this morning, poor kitten."

They set out across the heath. They were both carrying oiled leather bags which had been filled with miscellaneous food stuff by the kitchen staff. Professor Sycamore had managed to force Lysandre to put his painkillers in the pocket of his bag, but it had involved quite a lot of cross wheedling.

The clouds were still low and smoke-coloured, but the air was still and surprisingly warm, so that, despite the relative darkness of the day, Professor Sycamore was soon feeling quite sweaty and muggy.

They had walked for about half an hour and had covered about two thirds of the distance to the lakes when they stopped and silently took their outer layers off. Professor Sycamore was left in a plain blue shirt with wide lapels (he used to have two in this exact style, but he'd somehow misplaced the other one).

Lysandre was in a loose, rust-coloured shirt that contrasted unpleasantly with the pallor of his skin, which had worsened as they walked. The shadows under his eyes stood out like ink on snow. As he folded his jacket away and tucked it into the bag, Professor Sycamore could see a vein ticking in his temple. His movements had a strange dualism to them, simultaneously effortful and languid, like a dancer. The effect was disorientating.

"Lysandre," said Professor Sycamore. "You're in pain."

Lysandre straightened up. "Thank you, Professor, for your extremely helpful input."

"Now now," said Professor Sycamore mildly. "Why don't you just take the painkillers? How are you going to appreciate the beauty of all the nice stuff you own if you want to swear at all of it?"

He saw a faint tensing of Lysandre's jaw and assumed Lysandre must be gritting his teeth.

"Because, Professor, I find it difficult to think through pink fog. Besides, those things are addictive."

Professor Sycamore opened his mouth to say something sarcastic about nicotine addiction, but then remembered the fate of the late Comtesse and closed it again.

Lysandre hesitated too, and Professor Sycamore wondered if the same thing as going through his mind.

Finally, Lysandre said, "One capsule, then. But please stop fussing. It's – distracting."

Professor Sycamore bowed his head in a mock-subservience that hid a real quiet horror. The way Lysandre said 'distracting' reminded him of the way he'd said 'don't touch me'. This is it, he reminded himself, this is the beginning of the end.

He watched Lysandre swallow the capsule and then they set off again. The silence wasn't exactly comfortable, but at least it was companionable.

The estate's lakes consisted of one enormous lake surrounded by several smaller ones. They had been walking towards the enormous lake, which looked like a midnight-blue mirror in the still air. Not a rippled disturbed its surface. It reflected the forests that fringed its furthest edge in its glassy depths with such motionless perfection that it looked as if there was an entire other world hidden under the water.

The shoreline closest to the two men lapped at the edge of the heath; the delineation between grass and water was surprisingly sharp, and they were able to sit down just inches away from the water's edge. Further out in the water, strange warped rocks protruded like sentinels, and, bizarrely, right in the distant middle of the lake, a roughly-built stone tower rose out of the liquid darkness.

"Mon dieu, what's that for?" asked Professor Sycamore, pointing at it. "Really intense fishing trips?"

"It's some architectural folly built by an ancestor," said Lysandre vaguely. "It used to have a light in the top. I think it's only purpose was decoration. It's quite lovely, though, the way it divides the sky."

"The way it what?" asked Professor Sycamore politely, rummaging through his bag, which had started to give off a faint garlicky scent of preserved meat.

"It divides the sky," Lysandre repeated. "Look, you can see it touches the clouds like a wand, and they line up on either side of it."

Professor Sycamore stopped rummaging and looked up slowly.

"It's like a minute hand on a clock that is half-submerged," said Lysandre, in a mild, relaxed tone. "Like an old mill wheel clock. Did they exist? Would time speed up when it rained?" He leaned back on his elbows and started to hum to himself.

Oh my god, thought Professor Sycamore, he's _high_.

"Would you like some saucisson?" he asked, because he couldn't think of anything else to say. Lysandre sat up.

"Yes please. Do you have the baguette? Maybe I have the baguette." He reached back into his bag and produced a badly crushed baguette, which he tore carefully in half. "There is also some hard cheese in here," he said, peering inside. "And some kind of salad in a box, which I am going to ignore. Ah, and some cidre."

"I don't think you should be drinking, in your condition," said Professor Sycamore. Lysandre gave him a long, slightly unfocused look.

"What condition?" he said.

Fortunately, it was cloudy apple juice. Lysandre unscrewed the top and swigged from it, then passed it to Professor Sycamore without looking. It was somehow the most touching gesture he'd made all day and it rendered Professor Sycamore quite weak. He lifted the bottle to his lips and quickly ran his tongue around the outside of the bottle, where it had touched Lysandre's mouth, and felt a horrible sense of worshipful yearning flood him.

They found a quiche lorraine in Professor Sycamore's bag, and some cherry tomatoes which they ate while they were still rummaging. There was another cheese as well, and a couple of apples. "From the orchard," said Lysandre. "We have an orchard. I have an orchard. _Un verger_. How strange," he said, frowning across the water. "I never realised what a melancholy word that was."

"I can think of sadder," said Professor Sycamore, who was thinking, your name is the saddest and most hopeless set of syllables I've ever uttered in the paroxysms of adoration.

"I used to know a song about an orchard," Lysandre continued. "Or, wait, perhaps it was just about a single tree."

"Sing it," said Professor Sycamore, daringly.

"I'd like some saucisson," said Lysandre, distracted. Professor Sycamore held it away from him.

"You can have some after you've sung the song," he said, grinning. Lysandre raised his eyebrows, then shrugged.

"Alors, since you're the custodian of the cured meat," he said, then took a deep breath and started to sing.

Professor Sycamore couldn't look at him; he stared at the water by his feet, his entire body numb with happiness. The song was a lullaby, a very sad one about a lonely tree that longed to shelter someone in the shadow of its branches. Lysandre sang it in a soft, faraway voice, and every note ran down the length of Professor Sycamore's spine like loving hands, reached into his body and left him defenceless, sent electric currents all the way through his libido.

When Lysandre was finished, he said, "You have a very lovely voice."

"Don't you? I always imagined that you did," said Lysandre, then looked frankly astonished at the words that had come out of his mouth.

"I used to be in a band," Professor Sycamore admitted, cutting the saucisson with a half-blunt knife. "I have done some singing in my time. Actually, I was a good singer but a really dire guitarist."

Lysandre reached out and took a couple of slices of the meat from his hand and he almost jumped at the contact.

"Tell me about your band," he said.

So Professor Sycamore told him about the band he'd been in as an undergraduate, with Ben Raine and a few other students, and how terrible they'd been, and the smoky nightclubs they used to play at in Downtown Lumiose, the days afterwards spent in the library with hangovers, in the Ancient History section (the least visited part of the library, accessible only by a secret set of stairs behind a bookcase in Environmental Sciences), taking it in turns to nap in the armchair, cramming for tests in the dusty sunlight that came through the windows.

In return Lysandre told him about the athletics team he'd been on at Taurosbridge University, running through the Ingrand countryside (the most sentimentally mythologized of all landscapes, Lysandre claimed). He told him about the strange brick-lined passages that connected the university buildings to one another – some evidently old priest holes and secret catacombs – it was not unusual, Lysandre said, to take a wrong turning out of a lecture theatre, head downwards, and find yourself in a dead end of stone blackened by the torches of the long dead, strange sigils scratched into the walls.

Professor Sycamore told him about his first years in Lumiose City, a wide-eyed village boy with a lilting provincial accent and a bad-tempered Fletchling, getting hopelessly lost for hours at a time in the labyrinthine streets, alternatively ecstatic with his own sense of self-becoming, aware for the first time of the unlikeliness of his own existence, thrilled by the adventure, the newness, the hugeness of the capital, and terribly homesick for Petit Meaulnes. He told him about the shock of being in all the places that he'd read about, the sense that he was an actor in a play about himself, that, in the early days, he wasn't really sure of his lines.

Lysandre told him that there was nothing that made him more homesick for Kalos than Ingrand cooking, and the peculiar way they treated literature like an embarrassing disease but succeeded in producing hard, flinty, glorious poetry that struck sparks across the whole country. He told him about the years between university and his return to Kalos, some of which he'd spent travelling in other regions ("I was convalescing, you see, and Ingrand isn't really a very comfortable country for invalids, their capital city is the most appalling mess," but he stopped there, and wouldn't be drawn further on the subject of his illness).

Professor Sycamore told him about his family, about aloof Alexis, gentle Armand, vivacious Aurelia, his loving parents, the Pokémon they all kept. He told him about climbing the tree to see the Talonflame – Lysandre liked that story, made him go back and tell parts of it again.

"You thought you saw a flame," he said.

"Yes, I thought I saw a flame, but it was only baby Beckett, learning how to fly."

"And you siblings got into trouble."

"So much trouble, mon dieu! My mother almost shook the stones out of the wall with her shouting."

"Are all of your siblings as careless about their beauty as you are?" asked Lysandre. They had been passing the bottle of apple juice back and forth between them (the food now mostly eaten) and, as he asked this, Professor Sycamore fumbled the bottle.

"What do you mean?" he croaked. He felt suddenly drunk and thought, maybe this is cidre, maybe it has been _in disguise_.

"I mean, you're the scruffiest man I've ever met," said Lysandre, humorously. "You are almost dressing in defiance of the way you look. Attractive people sometimes do. I've noticed it on Amina as well," he said, his eyes darkening.

Professor Sycamore vaguely registered Lysandre saying someone else's name, but he was mainly listening to his pulse screech through his head.

But I always knew this, didn't I? he thought, against a rising tide of lust and panic. Back when we first met and I was promoted, and the department went out to La Jolie Gardevoir… I had a cigarette with him outside, I remember, and he told me that beauty was its own reward but also its own punishment and, mon dieu, putain, he was talking about _me_. He meant me! I must have registered that at the time, I remember being angry… what was I angry about? I don't even know now. All I can remember from that night are how bitten his lips were, and how close I was to his mouth. And he squeezed my shoulder.

He never touches me now, though. Ever since I started to want him in earnest, he stopped touching me.

Professor Sycamore had started to chew at the edge of his thumb as his thoughts piled up and toppled over one another. Lysandre looked preoccupied too, and a slow frown had started to creep over his features.

"I," said Lysandre, "would like a cigarette."

Professor Sycamore smiled at him. "Bon, I was just thinking that I would like to steal one of your cigarettes."

Lysandre reached back into his bag, produced a heavy gold lighter and the cigarette case with the fleur-de-lis embossment and extracted two of his cigarettes, rolled in black paper that was sprinkled with gold stars. He took out two cigarettes and put them both between his lips, lighting them with a flourish that made Professor Sycamore laugh, then passed one to the academic. The cigarette stuck momentarily to his lip, pulling gently at that soft curve of oft-imagined skin.

Professor Sycamore took it and let his mouth close slowly around the tip, shutting his eyes to replay the way Lysandre's lips had held the cigarette in his own.

They lay back and blew smoke at the smoky clouds.

"I'm running out of these," said Lysandre, looking at his cigarette critically. "I'll have to order more from my tobacconist. I wonder if the stars are set in any specific constellation? Am I smoking through my fate?" He started to hum again, still comfortably ensconced on Planet Painkiller.

"You smoke too much," said Professor Sycamore amiably.

"I'll give up when I'm thirty," said Lysandre.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-nine."

"Ah, giddy reckless youth!" said Professor Sycamore, who was thirty-two. "And when is your birthday?"

"December 30th."

"Now, why didn't you tell me that last year? We could have had a celebratory snowball fight."

"I can think of few things that would appeal to me less," said Lysandre, with a trace of his familiar hauteur.

"What do you like doing, then? Flower-arranging? Roller-discos?"

"I like not celebrating it and not having anyone draw attention to it."

"D'accord, we'll have a roller-disco this year," said Professor Sycamore happily.

He wriggled on the grass. "Mon dieu, I am quite sweaty. I wish you'd warned me that it was going to be this warm. When I think heath, I think dramatic winds and horizontal rain. I don't imagine humidity. I preserve that sort of thing for my evocations of jungles."

"Oh, shut up," said Lysandre, but with a lazy warmth in his voice.

"It's so sticky out here," continued Professor Sycamore. "I could almost do with a dip in the lake."

"Why don't you?"

"Well, mon ami, in the rush to get to Calincourt, I entirely neglected to pack my bathing suit."

Lysandre sat up and laughed. "Oh, Augustine," he said, "why should the water care what you're wearing?"

The unaccustomed use of his first name was bad enough; it went straight to his heart (stuttering it painfully) and his cock (making it twitch and stiffen), but what happened next almost laid him out. Lysandre ground out his cigarette, tossed it aside, and started to unbutton his shirt.

You're not, thought Professor Sycamore. _You're not_.

Lysandre shrugged himself out of his shirt, revealing a body that was even more white and lovely against the dullness of the day. The dressings on his body glistened under a fine, thin coating of something, almost like a plastic encasement – presumably the stuff the doctor had put on him last night. Professor Sycamore couldn't take his eyes off him. Lysandre is undressing, he thought, then he thought this again and again on hysterical repeat.

When Lysandre (his expression distant, singing to himself under his breath) started to unbuckle his belt, Professor Sycamore made a noise between a cough, a whoop and a whimper, and turned to look determinedly in the other direction. He sat up too, to hide his erection from view. He didn't think he'd ever been more aroused, or more terrified. The sound of shoes being kicked off and, then, more intense, the rustle of cloth as Lysandre removed the last of his clothes, were in this moment more erotic than every fantasy he'd ever had put together.

Arceus, what am I going to do, he thought. How do I get rid of this? How can I stop him from seeing it? Mon dieu, if I touch it at all I think I'll come. I want to come so much, dear god, is there some way I can lie on my front and do it? Oh kill me, kill me, I'm so pathetic, I'm so turned on.

He heard a splash of water and looked round quickly. There was no shallow end to the lake – Lysandre was already submerged to his shoulders.

"Didn't the doctor tell you not to swim?" he called in a shaky, ridiculous voice, much higher than his usual.

"I am the Comte and I'll swim when I want," said Lysandre. "And I can order you to, as well."

"You most certainly can not," said Professor Sycamore, who was thinking, oh please order me to get in, oh please, let's be naked together, _let's be naked together_, I'm going to choke, I'm going to start screaming, help.

"Yes I can," said Lysandre. "Do as I tell you and get in the water."

He was saying all this in an affable tone of voice but there was something sharp and bright in his eyes, that same wildness that Professor Sycamore thought he had seen yesterday, during the funeral. It was subsumed now, bobbing under several layers of painkiller insulation, but it pierced Professor Sycamore. It's that darkness that holds him together, he thought desperately, and it takes him apart too.

"Come on," said Lysandre, and disappeared under water.

Right, now, thought Professor Sycamore, and hastily tore himself out of his clothes. If I can just get in the water without him seeing it…

He managed to dive in just as Lysandre came up.

The water, below the surface, was pitch black and had an earthy, subtle taste. He kicked about, caught his leg on a sunken log, shouted out a stream of bubbles and bobbed up to the surface, coughing. He could stand up, just about, but the bottom of the lake was silty and soft, giving way under his feet.

Lysandre was watching him – he'd swum a little further out and was treading water. His hair had flattened and lay in dark red strands around his shoulders. He looked like a young god bathing.

"Lysandre, your hair looks stupid," said Professor Sycamore, and idly swam out to join him.

"Yours looks pretty foolish too," said Lysandre.

They smiled uncertainly at each other.

"Maybe this was a terrible idea," said Professor Sycamore.

"Maybe."

It was impossible to see more than a few inches below the surface. Professor Sycamore regretted not keeping his eyes on Lysandre while he was undressing – this would probably be his only chance to see Lysandre naked, and he'd wasted it panicking about the obviousness of his need. The water was cold enough to have stunned him out of a hard-on, but now his whole body was yearning hopelessly, every cell longing to be closer to the indifferent Comte. He imagined what it would be like to feel their bodies tangling in the water and had to look away again, in case the expression on his face gave him away.

He couldn't touch the bottom here. A faint clipped noise and a ripple on the water made him glance around again. There were two more brisk little noises and two more ripples, expanding in concentric circles.

"Lysandre," he said, "I think it's started to rain."

"Good," said Lysandre. "Perhaps time will speed up."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"The clock of the water," said Lysandre, although even he was looking confused. "Isn't there… somewhere we need to be? You and I? Some time?"

Professor Sycamore looked into that handsome, haughty face, gentled by the strange afternoon, at the contained wildness in his eyes. "Lysandre," he said, "I don't think you're in any fit state to be swimming."

Lysandre pulled away from him. "Come on," he said, "we'll swim out to the nearest rocks."

Professor Sycamore sighed.

They swam slowly. Lysandre couldn't move very fast, his progress hampered by flashes of pain, which were damped down but not banished by the drugs he'd taken. Professor Sycamore kept pace with him, hoping to see another part of his body break the surface. Just let me see his arse, he was thinking, I'll die happy, he has such a beautiful arse.

They reached the rock and both slapped their hands onto it, panting.

It wasn't big – there was less than a foot between them as they clung to it, getting their breath back. The rain had started to fall in earnest, distorting the mirror of the lake. Professor Sycamore thought he could feel the heat of Lysandre's body through the water, like a fever made flesh. He looked at Lysandre and saw him looking back at him and, for once, did not flinch or look away. They leaned their heads on the rock and faced one another, matching their breathing.

"Is this where we needed to be?" he asked Lysandre.

"Yes," said Lysandre. "I think so."

And he reached out through the rainfall to hook a strand of hair out of Professor Sycamore's mouth, and looped it gently behind his ear.

A loud clap and a hollow noise overhead made them look up.

Degaule, the Dragonite, was flying over the lake. As they watched, he landed on the pointed, conical roof of the tower folly in the centre of the water and folded his wings.

"What's he doing?" asked Lysandre, frowning.

"I don't know," murmured Professor Sycamore, who had raised a hand to his cheek to touch all the places Lysandre's fingers had briefly brushed. He felt a falling, failing sense of loss.

Degaule had tipped his head back and shut his eyes. The rain streamed over his face – it took the two men a few minutes to realise that he was crying, in a still, controlled, empty sort of way.

He opened his eyes once more and looked towards the château. His eyes were so noble and so purely sad that Professor Sycamore felt that twist of guilt again, for the vileness and the messiness of human emotions.

Then the Dragonite made one final, mourning cry, and dived into the lake.

The water pushed back and then closed over him.

The waves caused by the dive reached the Professor and the Comte and slapped them both in the chest.

"Nom de dieu," muttered Lysandre. "Did he just…?"

It took a couple of seconds to hit Professor Sycamore, but when he did, he gave a strangled cry and pushed away from the rock.

"We have to get help!" he shouted, or tried to shout, but the water filled his mouth and he ended up choking instead.

"But did he just…?"

Professor Sycamore coughed up a mouthful of lake water and tried again. "Lysandre, we have to get help! Now!" He was shouting over the noise of the rain.

"But why?" asked Lysandre, still holding on to the rock. "They're at home enough in the water, aren't they?"

"No!" Professor Sycamore yelled, already swimming back. "Dragonairs can breathe underwater, but Dragonites can't! They lose their gills once they grow wings! For fuck's sake Lysandre, come on!"

"There's no point," called Lysandre, levelly. "By the time we get back, he'll already be dead."

The blunt, calm way he said it shocked the Professor. "How can you- how can you be so calm about it? This is awful! This is fucking horrible! We have to- we need to go back!"

He didn't really hear the next words, because the sound of the rain and the distance between them swallowed them up, but this is what he thought he heard:

"But what's so awful about dying? It's the one's left behind who must be the caretakers of the remains."

Or something like that. When he looked round again, Lysandre was still staring out across the water, a strangely peaceful expression on his face.


	10. Fire - Part III

Lysandre did eventually swim back out to the shore, but at a leisurely, dreamy pace that frustrated Professor Sycamore so much he unleashed a torrent of lyrical and imaginative abuse over the sound of the rain. He started with some simple name-calling of the 'connard' and 'salaud' variety, but had soon worked up to neologisms and creative analogies filled with spitting insults. The rain started to fall heavily – dangerously so – but through it he could see Lysandre looking at him with an expression of drugged-up, sleepy surprise.

They pulled themselves out of the water into more water. Their clothes were drenched, but they dragged them on anyway. Professor Sycamore was too furious to even remember to try and get a glimpse of Lysandre's body. He was surprised the rain wasn't turning to steam where it hit him, he was so angry.

When he started to repack the bags, Lysandre said, "Leave them. I'll send someone to fetch them."

"And will you send someone to fetch the body too, you fucking imbecile?" snarled Professor Sycamore.

"I will," said Lysandre.

"Did you hear me call you a fucking imbecile?"

"I did."

"You are a fucking imbecile."

They started to walk back through the storm, hunched over against the cold rain. The château was a distant blur and the heath was a liquid nightmare.

"You are going to catch a cold," said Lysandre, in an odd, careful voice, raised against the crashing rainfall.

"You're going to catch my fist in the side of your head in a moment," said Professor Sycamore.

"You're upset," said Lysandre, as if this was a novel idea and he was having to turn it over.

"Of course I'm upset! We just witnessed a suicide! And your reaction was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen! Upset!"

"I'm… sorry," murmured Lysandre. "I'm not really thinking clearly…"

They struggled on in silence, the storm gathering strength around them. It felt as if they'd been walking for hours, even though Professor Sycamore knew it could not have been more than quarter of an hour, maybe twenty minutes. Time slowed in the workings of the water clock.

The ground was getting treacherous. Professor Sycamore slipped on the grass and staggered into Lysandre, who took a sharp breath in and pushed him away again. His face had gone pale and he clutched his side with whitened knuckles.

"Oh, mon dieu!" Professor Sycamore exclaimed. "Your injuries! Oh Arceus, we really need to get back to the château." He peered through the rain, but everything just looked wavering and wet by now. "Are the painkillers still working?"

"They're wearing off," said Lysandre, through gritted teeth. He was still clutching at his side.

"You're unbelievable, you are the most unbelievable idiot," said Professor Sycamore miserably. "Put your arm around my shoulders."

"No."

"What?!"

"I don't need to. Thank you, though," he added as an afterthought.

Professor Sycamore stopped (his feet sinking into the increasingly boggy ground) and faced him. "Lysandre, I'm not offering out of politeness. I want us both to get back alive, otherwise I'm going to be in a lot of trouble."

Lysandre sighed heavily.

"Don't sigh at me! I'm not the one being petulant here!"

"I'm too heavy for you," said Lysandre, who had also stopped walking and was standing very straight against the rain. He was still beautiful, Professor Sycamore noticed. He was like a mirage, a cruel illusion of perfection.

"Try me," said Professor Sycamore, and despite the dreadfulness of that lonely death, despite the fear, despite the rain and the exhaustion, the cold and the wet, he felt that low, base thrill of desire, as intense and unstoppable as an allergic reaction.

Lysandre took a couple of steps towards him, then, somehow managing to convey sarcasm and resignation in his movements, draped an arm over Professor Sycamore's shoulders. His body pressed against Professor Sycamore's side, feverishly hot even in the chilling rain. Professor Sycamore instinctively put his arm around Lysandre's waist to support him, and feeling the firm planes of his waist under his arm, close enough to smell the clean but musky big-cat smell of his soaked skin, he made a ridiculous noise at the back of his throat, a sort of 'gghh'.

They didn't walk but stood like this, adjusting their footing. Lysandre was breathing hard again, his body tense as a tightened rope in Professor Sycamore's unsure, one-armed embrace. He must be in terrible pain, thought Professor Sycamore. I wish I didn't find this so erotic. (He was hard again, and he'd dressed in such haste that he could feel his thick cock straining uncomfortably, pointing sideways towards his hips.)

"About Degaule," said Lysandre. His voice was so close to Professor Sycamore's ear that the dripping academic jumped in surprise.

"I don't want to talk about that right now," said Professor Sycamore, feeling cold dread replacing arousal.

"I do," said Lysandre. "Listen to me. You think what you saw was monstrous but it was noble. He was my father's Pokémon. My father loved him and he loved my father. Why would he choose to live out his days watching the world grind endlessly on without the one he loved? He took himself out of a filthy place, this place, this time."

"There's nothing 'noble' about suicide," said Professor Sycamore. "Nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm not having this conversation with you right now. Let's just assume you are an idiot and concentrate on trying to get back."

"Death is clean," Lysandre was murmuring now. "Death is clean and the people who remain are purified by it."

"Shut up," said Professor Sycamore. He'd started to replay finding Professor Axe's body and was gripped by a stammering anguish.

They still hadn't started walking. They stood with their arms around one another, letting the freezing rain slap at them. Professor Sycamore remembered gloomily that they'd left their outer layers in the backpacks. It was too late to go back and get them now. Rivulets of water ran between their feet, churning down towards the lake. The ground was so sodden it could barely be called ground any more. It was turning into a marsh.

"Here and now," Professor Sycamore said, "we are alive."

It was supposed to come out cheerful and gloom-cancelling, but it sounded forlorn. It should, Professor Sycamore thought, be followed by a passionate and life-affirming kiss. Without it, the words seemed desperate, spoken at a chasm's edge, or at least they did to him.

"What a charmingly hopeful thing to say," said Lysandre, with a hint of his usual withering superiority. "You are an optimistic man, though, Professor."

"Ah, oui?" said Professor Sycamore, who was scanning the ground for the safest way forward. A clump of mud dislodged itself and slapped into his shoes with a horrible sucking noise.

"You are like the one window with a light burning in an abandoned house," said Lysandre, who was leaving Planet Painkiller the hard way. "Isn't it foolish, though, Professor? To have so much hope?"

He could feel that Lysandre was starting to flag as the pain inched its tendrils through his body. He had to lean more of his weight on Professor Sycamore, his breathing uneven, and the Professor had to readjust his footing to keep supporting him. He felt the young Comte's forehead press against the top of his head as the man weakened and he wanted to weep for the sheer pleasure of contact, and the fruitlessness of the situation.

"Isn't it, mon ami? Don't we make ourselves foolish when we hope as much as we do?"

Professor Sycamore felt something crumple inside him and shut his eyes. He was fighting the urge to turn around and put his other arm around Lysandre's waist, draw him closer, say the words he'd always wanted to say and surrender himself to the Comte's mercy.

A flash of light ahead of them made them look up. As it drew closer, the diffuse beam divided into two distinct circles of light. Over the sound of the rain, Professor Sycamore could hear a car's engine struggling against the ground.

"Ah,"said Lysandre, straightening up with difficulty. "They sent a car."

"Thank Arceus!" the Professor shouted hoarsely.

The car stopped a few metres away from them and two members of the household staff jumped out, sliding on the wet ground.

"My lord!" one of them shouted. "Are you alright?"

"Never better," said Lysandre drily. "Are there towels?"

"In the back of the car, Comte," said the other figure. "Please get in. We will take you both back immediately."

Professor Sycamore felt a hand grip his upper arm and another grip his shoulder. It was the footman who had been shadowing him since his arrival. He gave him a damp half-smile and let himself be guided over the mud towards the car door. He heard Lysandre say to the other – a man who looked rather more senior – "Degaule is dead."

"Comte?"

"I will need you to organise a team of men to retrieve his body from the big lake. And let Gagnon know."

"Of course, Comte, I will do so as soon as we return. Gagnon will be… upset by the news."

"No doubt," said Lysandre, and he may have said something else, but the footman had managed to get the car door open by this time and he was gently helping the Professor in.

Vyvy, Théo and Beckett were all sat at the far end of the seats, huddled together. Vyvy sat in the middle, with her arms around the necks of the other two Pokémon. Beckett was nibbling distractedly at her ear, the way a human might bite his nails. All three were saucer-eyed and frozen with shock.

"Oh, mon dieu," said Professor Sycamore, as soon as he saw them. "Oh, mes petits, I'm so sorry, we didn't mean to make you worry…"

He crawled across the seat to touch them but then the door they were nearest to opened and Lysandre was helped in by the other servant. The three Pokémon all turned their heads to stare at him with the same dumbstruck expression.

"Oh…" said Lysandre, and a look of guilty, almost frightened tenderness came over his face; Professor Sycamore had to look away, because it was an expression he'd imagined repeatedly in certain fantasies but had never really seen. He picked up one of the huge towels that lay folded across the seats instead, and passed it to Lysandre without looking at him.

"Come here," he heard Lysandre say softly, and saw, out of the corner of his eyes, the Comte lifting the Litleo out of Vyvy's arms. As soon as he did, it seemed to break and spell and the Braixen and the Fletchinder came scrabbling over to him. He pulled them into his lap and hugged them both, the towel making a tent around them. Lysandre sat back, vaguely towelling his hair, then pressed his forehead against the Litleo's (who was now big enough to have his back legs on Lysandre's thighs while he did this).

The car started up and began its arduous journey back to the château.

As Professor Sycamore sat in the soggy little tent of the towel with his two Pokémon, he felt a sort of sheet of warmth filtering through his shirt. The two Fire Pokémon were sharing their heat. It wasn't a Pokémon power or a healing ability; it was their link to him at work, their aspect of themselves that was a part of him giving back, reciprocating, protecting. It was as simple and as complex as the force that drives the flower out of the seed in the earth; it was a daily miracle that they were his at all.

"Don't hurt yourselves," he said quietly. "I'm so sorry."

He heard the Litleo purring hard, and remembered reading somewhere that cats purr when they are happy and when they are in pain.

They all sat lost in an intensely private reverie. Neither Lysandre nor Professor Sycamore spoke, although Professor Sycamore did think, huh, if I went for a walk on a rainy heath and got lost, I'd have to find my own way back or else just die of pneumonia, I don't have an army of servants looking out for me.

When the car at last drew up, Professor Sycamore felt the bitter chill that had been harassing his chest and throat had quite gone, although he was still damp and glum. Vyvy shut her eyes and leaned her cheek against his arm, although Beckett gave him a look that said, you are a bloody fool and if I were bigger I would give you such a thwacking.

They were helped out of the car by more servants. Professor Sycamore had a vague impression of shouting and people holding umbrellas, and then the steps up to the front door, but mostly he just looked at the floor, trying to keep both of his Pokémon in his arms (they were on their second stage of evolution, they were both quite heavy).

He turned just as the front doors were shutting and was surprised to see how dark it had become.

"It's raining so hard," he said, muzzily. "It's almost like it's turned to night."

"It's coming up to six o'clock, Professor," said Lysandre. He was still very pale, leaning against the base of one of the two statues in the entrance way (now with the blindfold removed), with the Litleo looking very tired at his feet. Professor Sycamore turned and gawped at him.

"How can that be? We went down to the lake after breakfast! I mean, I know we had a rather late breakfast, what with the stabbing and the sleeping and so on, but surely we cannot have spent an entire day there…"

"Curious, isn't it," said Lysandre, in a flat voice that shut the conversation down. He looked about ten years older. The painkillers had obviously completely worn off and now he was back in the cold, real world. "You had better go up and change, Professor, or you will get ill. You need to rest. Shall we say, dinner at eight again? I'll send someone to fetch you."

Professor Sycamote felt something in him bridling with irritation – what, are you going to start ordering me around again? remember how well that worked out – but he was so enervated by the events of the day that it turned into flat sadness before it even broke the surface of his mind. "D'accord," he said instead. "You're the Comte."

He let himself be led to his room.

He changed out of his wet clothes and into some fresh ones (noting, as he did, that he was down to his last set of clean clothes) and sat on the floor, feeling foggy and miserable. He pulled the Braixen and the Fletchinder onto his lap, where they settled against each other, their eyelids low. He looked down at them.

"Do you remember," he said, "when you were both little and I could fit you onto my lap so easily? Do you remember I used to make you both sleep like this? When you were still a sweet little Fletchling, Beckett, and you were so suspicious of Vyvy when I first got her, you used to peck her on the head and the sulk on top of the cupboards everytime she tried to play with you. So I made you cuddle with her on my lap until you learned to play nicely. You were such a cute, grumpy little chicken!"

Beckett gave him a dirty look that was an almost exact replica of the one he used to give Professor Sycamore when he was forced, as a Fletchling, to suffer the good-natured Fennekin licking the top of his head. Vyvy obviously remembered too, because she curled herself around Beckett and fluffed at his face with her tail.

It was a playful scene but he could see that they were both looking drained and bedraggled, and they were both shivering, as if some chill had entered their bones (and he knew where that came from, he was at fault, he was a bad person).

He gently lifted them both onto to bed and then strode over to the door. He opened it, stuck his head out, and called,

"Coo-ee! Excusez-moi?"

Like a genie summoned from the lamp, the footman who was his shadow materialised. I liked Roland better, thought Professor Sycamore vaguely, but gave the man one of his most sparkling smiles and said, "Could I have a hairdryer?"

"Certainly, I'll fetch one immediately," said the footman smartly, and disappeared.

He went back to the bed and sat down beside them. When the footman knocked and let himself in, carrying the hairdryer, he saw the Pokémon and said, "Poor creatures! It's a very rough storm to be caught in, isn't it?"

It's not just the storm, Professor Sycamore wanted to say, it's me, it's all my fault, I almost caught pnumoenia and I'm half-crazed with desire and I'm so depressed and everything is going wrong and they're caught in that, they're stuck with me, I'm poisoning them by existing. But what he said was, "Yes, quite extraordinary, some sky-cow must have a very full bladder."

The footman laughed politely and gave him the hairdryer. "I'll come at ten to eight to take you to dinner, Professor," he said, "but if you need anything in the meantime, just pull on the bellrope over there."

"Oh, you don't like my dulcet voice calling 'coo-ee' down the corridors? I thought it was enchanting," said Professor Sycamore, and the footman laughed again, bowed, and left him.

He plugged the hairdryer in – the socket took some locating, as it had been very carefully painted to match the wallpaper, the du Feus evidently being a family who did not approve of mismatched decoration in any way – and held it about a foot above the two Pokémon. They shut their eyes and let the hot air ruffle them.

"Mes pauvres petits," he said sadly. It would only help them superficially, but it was better than nothing. It was the best he could give them.

He spent the next hour and a bit trying to force himself not to think about Lysandre, and especially not to think about Lysandre high and seemingly flirtatious, or Lysandre naked, or Lysandre drenched in the rain, his body long and firm and lovely in his arms, and how Lysandre would feel, say, under a shower with him, against him, his hair flattened, a knowing smile on his lips.

He had three messages on his phone: one from Dr Raine, one from Hua An and one from Professor Fortmaine. Dr Raine's was a rambling thing that went over five texts, warm and concerned, and it made him feel worse. Hua An's said, very cryptically, We need to talk, it is Important. Professor Fortmaine's was even more cryptic. It read, shortly, What do you think you're doing? and Professor Sycamore wondered whether she'd sent it to the wrong person. There were a couple of voicemails too, from his mother (who had never gotten the hang of texts) and from Armand, but he didn't want to let their voices out in Calincourt – he felt as if he would taint them.

He didn't have the energy to answer any of the texts. There was a bookshelf in the corner of the room, filled with classic novels in old-fashioned leather covers. He picked out a famous one that he'd read already (so he wouldn't have to concentrate too hard), lay down on the bed, and worked on immersing himself in someone else's unhappiness, for a change. His Pokémon dozed fitfully beside him.

At ten to eight, as promised, there was a knock on the door. Professor Sycamore heard the knock then instinctively looked up at the clock on the wall. The hand that marked the seconds was just ticking off the 12. These people are _weird_, thought Professor Sycamore, and he swung himself off the bed.

The footman was waiting outside the door. "If you're ready, Professor, I'll take you along to the Red Chambers now."

Professor Sycamore thought he was so deep into misery that he'd forgotten how to panic, but the words made his skin prickle. "We're dining in the Red Chambers?" he repeated, unable to keep the quaver out of his voice.

"Yes, Professor," said the footman, setting off along the corridor. "It is where the Comte traditionally takes his private meals."

The 'Comte' traditionally doesn't do anything, thought Professor Sycamore, I've known the 'Comte' to not eat dinner at all because he's so busy working. I've known the 'Comte' to terrorise the chefs in his café by sitting at one of the outside tables, chainsmoking and frowning at every dish they put in front of him, even when every dish has been frankly delicious.

But then he thought, that's who I'm dealing with now, isn't it. I'm dealing with Lysandre, the Comte du Feu, the embodiment of the Château du Feu, the grand générale, like his father and his father before him, et cetera, et cetera. How well do I really know him?

The Red Chambers were set high in one of the wings of the château. The first room was a room filled with mirrors, paintings, chairs and very little else – Professor Sycamore suspected this was a sort of waiting room, or audience room, where the Comte would see those guests who were too unimportant to be let into the inner sanctum. It made him feel very tired to imagine Lysandre picking up where Lazare had left off, the persona of the Comte unchanging even though the man striding under the banner of title was new.

The next room was a much smaller and more simply appointed affair. It was very red indeed, and extremely old-fashioned. The furniture in here looked as if it belonged in a museum; it was well-worn and well-cared for. The crimson damask wallpaper made the room dark and cocoon-like, despite the large windows, and so the gold highlights – the frames of the paintings, the occasional gold-patterned tile on the fireplace, the backs of the chairs, the fine detail on vases – were subdued, gleaming subtly rather than glittering. It was the restrained display of wealth from a family rich and powerful beyond the dreams of most of Kalos.

Lysandre was stood at one of the windows, staring out at the still-falling rain. He was wearing, Professor Sycamore noted with some pain, the dark red cashmere jumper that the Professor had always adored. Its luxurious softness over the hard lines of the young Comte's body was, well, never mind, never mind any more.

The footman announced him, then bowed again and withdrew. Lysandre turned slowly.

"Bonjour, Professor," he said, his voice dull. "I hope you are well-rested?"

"I'm fine, how are you?" Professor Sycamore asked immediately. "Are they retrieving Degaule's body? Did someone tell Gagnon? Have you taken any more painkillers? Did you call the doctor?"

Lysandre held up one hand to stem the flow of questions. He did not answer straight away, but stared at the floor, seemingly marshalling his thoughts. Eventually he said, "Please have a seat, Professor."

There was a table set in the midde of the room. Professor Sycamore sat down at one side and Lysandre sat opposite him. As Lysandre pulled his chair out, something on his finger glimmered oddly, leaving a trace of colour in the air before fading to cool stone again.

"What's that?" exclaimed Professor Sycamore, peering at his hand. "Actually, answer the rest of my questions first. You'd be terrible on a gameshow, you know, we would never win the exciting prize of a two-week abseiling holiday in the Nord Pas."

His voice was trembling as he said this; he thought he must have sounded pathetically overwrought. The corners of Lysandre's mouth moved in something resembling a smile then immediately vanished again.

"As you wish," he said, his voice still dull. "The estate Pokémon trainers are dragging the lake now – we had to send for some Water Pokémon from the town to help us, there aren't any here. I told Gagnon myself, and I think it may have set back his recovery by a couple of weeks."

"I'm sorry. Was he very attached to the Dragonite?"

"He was very attached, as you say, to my father. With Degaule dead, I am the last living link to him." Lysandre sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "What else did you ask me?"

"Painkillers."

Lysandre rolled his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose again. "No. I have _not_ taken any more painkillers. And I did not call the doctor. What happened earlier today was an unfortunate interlude."

The words 'unfortunate interlude' made Professor Sycamore feel as if he'd been slapped around the face, but he didn't show it. "And the ring?"

Lysandre flexed his fingers. "This is my father's ring. It's been in the family for generations."

"Ah, yes, I seem to remember Gagnon mentioning it… And now you're the Comte, it's yours?"

"Yes. Now that I am the Comte." Lysandre sighed very deeply and rubbed his face with his hands. "Professor… I need to say something to you. Something I am not proud to have to say to you. I want to ask your forgiveness in advance, but I know that such a thing is impossible. I will simply say what I need to say, and hope you will forgive me for it."

Professor Sycamore felt as if every pint of blood in his body had undergone a temperature change and rushed to a different limb. He wondered if Lysandre could see the changes dawning and fading over his skin, like a map of his desires and fears being drawn over his body. "What is it, mon ami?" he asked, in a voice unnaturally soft.

"What happened today," Lysandre began, then stopped. He was sitting with his elbows on the table, his arms crossed. At this moment, he looked nothing like an angel or a god or a nightmare illusion. He just looked like a man, and a very tired one at that.

"If you are about to apologise for your unpleasant response to Degaule's death, then you are forgiven," said Professor Sycamore quickly. "I may have reacted a little too violently, given your state of mind."

"No, no, it's not that." Lysandre bit his lips and Professor Sycamore died a little all over again. "It's- well, it's everything, really. The way I have behaved since you arrived here has not been, has not been _appropriate_."

"Well, what are friends for if not for acting inappropriately around," said Professor Sycamore, with entirely false hearty cheer. Lysandre looked up and his eyes flashed strangely.

"That's where you're wrong, Professor," he said, some of his sharpness returning. "I know you are the sort of man who would say that all friendship is a beautiful blessing, or what have you, and that friends should be able to reveal everything to one another, and other such sentimental nonsense, but the fact remains, Professor, that most people are strangers to one another, and we are all prisoners of our own minds."

He took a deep breath, and, looking down again, continued, "We maintain stable and useful relationships with one another by acting within the bounds of appropriateness and reciprocal respect. Oh, you may wish to protest in the name of sweetness and bunnies and the sunlight on dewdrops," he added, as Professor Sycamore opened his mouth to speak, "but you would be being disingenuous. You know as well as I do that what poets romantically call 'friendship', devoted and unconditional friendship, such as you might find in fables, is a false standard. We are all reaching with excessive care into one another's lives, trying only to touch what we know will not shatter or fragment or stain our fingers."

Professor Sycamore ran his tongue over his lips, which had gone dry. "What are you saying, Lysandre? That our friendship is 'inappropriate'? Especially now that you are the Comte?"

"That is not what I mean to say at all!" said Lysandre hotly, then reddened slightly and subsided. "You misunderstand me, Professor, although, yes, you are quite right; my behaviour was extremely unbecoming and foolhardy, given my new responsibilities. What I wanted to say was that I acted inappropriately. You responded appropriately, as a, as a _friend_ would."

There was a savage bitterness about the way Lysandre said 'friend', as if the word was a thorn lodged under his tongue and it hurt him to spit it out. Professor Sycamore felt the prickling panic overwhelm him when he heard Lysandre say it that way.

Oh mon dieu, he thought. He knows. I was too obvious. _He knows_. A 'friend' indeed!

(And worse still, at the back of his mind, throbbing with sick embarrassment, he thought, well, could he see my erection then? That's awful, I don't think I want to follow this thought, oh god, oh god, the shame of it, oh god.)

Lysandre paused for a few seconds, unable to meet Professor Sycamore's eyes.

"Now that I am able to look back on it with a clear mind, Professor, it has been a most _humiliating_ afternoon." Oh god, thought Professor Sycamore, oh god, oh god, I might cry, oh god, I'm so ashamed. "And so I am asking you… as a _friend_," that bitterness again, "to please leave tomorrow morning. It is a selfish thing to ask of you, I know. But I hope you understand why I am asking."

Professor Sycamore stared at his hands on his lap and wondered how noticeable his tears were, trembling on the edge of his lashes.

"I understand," he said hoarsely.

Lysandre breathed out slowly. "Thank you. I will arrange a car for you, of course." Professor Sycamore still couldn't look up, but he heard Lysandre shifting in his chair, perhaps crossing his arms over his chest. "Professor?"

He couldn't reply.

"Augustine?" This said in a strange voice, faltering at the edges.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry that what happened… happened."

Professor Sycamore touched one hand to his cheek, to catch the tear that fell there as unobtrusively as possible. "So am I," he said.

He heard Lysandre stand up, and saw him out of the corner of his eye, pulling on a bellrope.

"Ah, we are actually having dinner, then?" he said, trying to inject some life into his voice.

"Yes," said Lysandre, sitting back down. "I wanted to- I wanted you to see the Red Chambers. I thought it might be nice to have dinner here because- because I am not sure, you see, I am not sure… when we will see one another again."

And Professor Sycamore thought, and now the world ends. And now it ends. It ends.

"Of course," he said, and just caught the edge of some dark and damaged expression on Lysandre's face.

After a few minutes, some servants came in with the first course and a bottle of wine, which they poured. There was a brief elegant ballet of plates and serving tongs, then the servants departed.

Professor Sycamore thought, right. Right. If this is all over, then, if this is how it ends, then I am going to get drunk. I am going to get _fucked up_.

It was the worst and most awkward dinner they'd ever had, notwithstanding the deliciousness of the food. Professor Sycamore fast outdrank Lysandre, who was looking tired and slumped, pushing the food around his plate. Eventually he took his cigarette case out of his pocket, put it on the table and stared at it gloomily while Professor Sycamore drank his way through the bottle of wine.

After the third glass, Professor Sycamore became reckless.

"Why don't you smoke?" he asked Lysandre, a little louder and a little more aggressively than he'd intended.

"I wouldn't want to ruin the flavours of the food," said Lysandre, who was carefully building a tower of haricots verts on his plate.

"You're not eating."

"No," said Lysandre, "but you are."

"So? I'll be gone tomorrow anyway," snapped Professor Sycamore. "This is good wine," he added.

"I thought you said I smoked too much," said Lysandre, also in a surprisingly aggressive voice.

"You do," said Professor Sycamore. He reached for his wineglass and missed it, catching the edge so that it fell. Fortunately there was barely any wine left in it and it only made a small puddle on the table. "Oopf. I'll need more wine."

The servants had left the wine bottle on the table after Lysandre had given them a Look during the serving of the entrée. There was half a glass left in it. Professor Sycamore shakily poured it for himself.

"Yes," he continued, "you do. Our entire _friendship_," and here he mimicked Lysandre's quiet viciousness when he spoke the word, "has been punctuated by you smoking at me."

"You smoke too," said Lysandre, in an oddly defeated voice. He'd frowned deeply when Professor Sycamore said 'friendship'; he probably thought it was inappropriate to keep bringing the embarrassment of their false friendship up, Professor Sycamore thought.

"Not the way you do. I'm surprised your lips aren't on fire," said Professor Sycamore, then hesitated. That sentence didn't even make sense, he thought. I just want to talk about his mouth. I just want to look at his mouth. Oh, those lips, those bitten lovely lips.

Lysandre sighed dramatically and reached for the cigarettes. Professor Sycamore slapped his hand on the table, making the cutlery jump.

"I've changed my mind," he said sharply. "You can't smoke. I want to eat dessert."

Lysandre stood up and tugged on the bellrope, rather harder than necessary. He didn't sit back down but leant against the back of another chair, staring angrily at his feet.

He thinks I am trying to embarrass him, thought Professor Sycamore. Well, maybe I am. He embarrassed me, or at least, I embarrassed myself in front of him, and I, oh I don't know, I don't know.

He felt a sudden rush of guilt. He was being a bad friend. Again.

Dessert was an exquisite chocolate mousse concoction, served in champagne flutes. The servant who brought them in left them on the table, politely affecting not to notice the Comte sulking on the other side of the room.

Professor Sycamore picked up his long-handled dessert spoon and his chocolate mousse and walked over to Lysandre.

"Are you going to show me the rest of the Red Chambers?" he asked, in a conspicuously normal voice which only shook a little.

Lysandre did not look up. "Are you sure you are interested in them, Professor?"

"Well, since you are forcing me to leave tomorrow-"

"Asking," Lysandre interrupted, "I'm asking you, as a – as a final kindness-"

"Whatever you want to call it," said Professor Sycamore, whose heart had stuttered when Lysandre used the word 'final'. "The fact remains that I will probably never get another chance to see the inner chambers of a Comte."

"True," said Lysandre glumly. "Come and see my father's study, then. I haven't been in there since I was twenty-one, except to retrieve this ring."

"You didn't rifle through the drawers, check for secret passages, that sort of thing?"

"I preferred not to linger," said Lysandre wearily. "It is a room filled with bad memories, Professor. I can feel them collecting in the curtains. It's a bitter place for me."

"You'd better bring your dessert then," said Professor Sycamore, and was rewarded with the ghost of a smile.

The study was reached by a door at the far end of the room they'd been in. Surprisingly, it was not red, or at least not the same overpowering red as the rest of the chambers. There was a tapestry hung off to one side, embroidered with the coat of arms of the Château du Feu – which featured a lot of rearing Pyroars and red in general – but the rest of the room didn't have the same obsessive-compulsive approach to interior design. There was another wide window, which was set behind a large mahogany desk, and a shelf filled with books. The carpet was surprisingly threadbare.

Lysandre stepped into the room and stood, with a pernickety exactitude, on a patch of carpet directly opposite the desk. He was looking at the desk, or at least his eyes were pointed at the desk; Professor Sycamore suspected the focus of his gaze was several years in the past.

"Did you often come up here?" he asked, wandering along the edge of the room. There was a black-and-white photograph of a Charmeleon and a Dratini on the wall, sitting against one another, the Dratini cuddling up, its eyes closed. The Charmeleon was holding the remains of a profiterole.

"Rarely," said Lysandre. He was spooning the mousse automatically into his mouth, his face unchanging, apparently not tasting anything. "Only if my father wanted to give me one of his lectures, or adminster a beating."

Professor Sycamore stumbled and hit his thigh against a large marble chessboard, knocking over one of the knights. "Oh," he said. He felt a lurch of nausea and thought, oh dear, I drank too much.

"I suppose I ought to thank him for them," said Lysandre, still staring at the past, his mouth tightening. "He said the purpose was to instil _discipline_, and after all, what are we without _self-discipline_?"

Professor Sycamore didn't want to have this conversation, it sounded too much like the conversation about appropriateness. He did wonder, though, how much these values had been instilled in Lysandre as a young boy, cowering in the shadow of his father's belt.

"He must have been kind to you once," he said instead. "Did he never hug you? Or tell you he was proud of you?"

"He never touched me, except to strike me," said Lysandre, his voice lifeless.

Professor Sycamore, who had grown up in a cocoon of encouragement, acceptance and love, flinched. He was imagining little Fizz never getting a cuddle from his father. It was appalling, a preposterous thought. How could you have a child and not want to hold it?

"Some kind words, at least," he said, a little pleadingly.

Lysandre had transferred his gaze to the bookcase. "After my first public Pokémon battle… that's a house tradition, by the way… I won, I was made the town champion, I was about sixteen. He just said 'good'. As if he had expected it."

"That's all you remember?"

"Oh, perhaps he told me that my schoolwork was acceptable, once or twice, when I came home with good grades. But no, Professor, he saved his voice for criticism." Lysandre tapped the spoon thoughtfully against his lips. "Do you see that shelf of books, Professor? The ones that all look the same?"

Professor Sycamore, who had been admiring a stylised map of the Kalos region, glanced round. "Ah, oui?"

"Those are his journals. I was strictly forbidden from looking at them. When I was ten, I snuck up here and picked one out at random to read. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It was just an entry about the developments of the estate Pokémon. But my father caught me, and he slapped the side of my head so hard I was deaf in my right ear for three days." Lysandre tapped the spoon against his mouth again, then said, with cold certainty, "I'm going to read those. Now."

Professor Sycamore was reminded of Professor Axe's journals, burned by the shit-eater (except for the one he had rescued, which was sitting in his apartment in Lumiose City). "The aristocracy certainly like to write things down, don't they," he murmured.

"We're not occupied in creating belles lettres, Professor," said Lysandre drily. "We are record keepers. We are the caretakers and the archivists of the kingdom. That is our entire purpose."

Professor Sycamore raised his eyebrows. "Really," he said, very very quietly, to himself. "I thought you just had a lot of money and power and wanted to keep it all. How silly of me."

Lysandre walked to kneel in front of the shelf of journals and ran his fingers over the leather of their spines. His shoulders were set defiantly but his fingers moved with the nervousness of a superstitious man. Professor Sycamore perched himself on the desk and prodded some of the things lying on it – a delicate glass desk ornament, a heavy ledger, a stack of papers, a chipped badge in the same stylised flame motif as the one he'd seen clipped to Gagnon's belt. Lysandre had put his unfinished chocolate mousse down on the desk and he carefully placed his next to it, exactly one inch apart, and thought, It is the symbol of our stupid pointless nearly-over friendship.

Lysandre pulled out one of the journals at random and started to read. After a few seconds, he sat down on the floor and crossed his legs. Professor Sycamore, rather the worse for the drink, started to hiccup softly and occupied himself with holding his breath and casting his eyes around the room. He let his breath in one great huff when he saw something that startled him.

"Lysandre," he said, "there's a doorknob over there."

"Hm?" said Lysandre, not looking up.

"Poking out from the tapestry. There is a doorknob. I think there's a door behind the tapestry."

Lysandre looked up this time. "Oh, yes," he said vaguely. "I believe its original purpose was a private prayer room. Disused for some time, of course. My father was not religious and I'm fairly sure my grandfather wouldn't even have prayed for his own life."

"Can I have a look?" Professor Sycamore asked, sliding off the desk and padding over.

"Si tu veux. It won't be very beautiful. The du Feu attitude to matters of spirituality has always been rather severe, even in my great-great-grandfather's day."

"The du Feu attitude to everything is 'rather severe'," muttered Professor Sycamore, and turned the doorknob.

To his surprise, he encountered no resistance. The mechanism was smooth and well-oiled, as if the room was in frequent use. He pushed the door inwards and lifted the tapestry to step inside. The tapestry swung back down with an expensive thump.

It was dark and he groped for a lightswitch on the wall. When he found one and flicked it, the room was lit with a soft, welcoming light. He stared at the walls and felt his face go cold with shock.

Back in the study, he heard Lysandre make a noise between a gasp and an exclamation, but when he looked round, he couldn't see him. He was still sitting on the floor in the study, reading the journals.

Whatever he's just read, thought Professor Sycamore, it can't be anywhere near as incredible as this.

The first thing Professor Sycamore had seen was on the wall directly opposite him; it was set in an enclave, which presumably once held an altar.

Hung in the enclave was a painting of Lysandre.

It was unfinished – there were still sketchy pencil marks covering half of the canvas – but the painter had already captured the flashing blue eyes, the halo of red hair, and the defiant jaw. He was beardless and his skin had a petal-like freshness to it; the painting must have been started while Lysandre was a teenager, before he left for Ingrando and Taurosbridge.

Professor Sycamore looked around the room and felt as if he'd passed through an entranceway into his own head, into one of his sensuous nightmares, conjured or hallucinated into being by desperation. Everywhere, everywhere, were pictures of Lysandre.

Not just pictures, the Professor realised, as he walked around the tiny room in his tipsy confusion. There were plenty of newspaper articles too, clipped out with devotional precision and affixed to the wall. There was a full double-page spread on Fleur-de-Lis Labs and the patenting of the Holo Caster, with a wonderful picture of Lysandre in his black suit with red piping, next to a dour-looking Xerosic and a glowing Amina, her hand on his arm.

There was an article about young Kalosian entrepeneurs, clipped from a pseudo-intellectual glossy magazine, which featured Lysandre frowning coldly in a portrait confection; Professor Sycamore could imagine him exasperating the magazine staff by refusing to wear any clothes other than the ones he'd arrived in. But there were also tiny columns cut from gossip rags, in which Lysandre was only briefly mentioned in a list of names present at an art gallery opening, or a gala, or a talk.

Some of the clippings were in Ingrand. There was an article with a picture that Professor Sycamore recognised; it was one of the photos he had found himself during a guilty internet-plundering session, all of which were kept in a locked folder labelled 'cauchemar' on his home computer. The picture showed a young Lysandre aged twenty or twenty-one, wild-eyed and triumphant at the end of a race that he had won for his university athletics team. Next to it was a large print of the photograph, evidently developed from the photographer's original negative. Professor Sycamore felt a twinge of covetousness.

There was one of Lysandre aged about ten, cuddling a gigantic Purugly. An Umbreon with wary eyes was curled around his neck. Lysandre looked blissfully content, with a small smile on his lips that was somehow much older than the rest of his face. The oven from the Comtesse's chambers was visbible in the background.

There were dozens and dozens of photos, some of which were photos of Lysandre as a child or a young teenager, many more of which were Lysandre as an adult. There were plenty that Professor Sycamore had never seen before, and he had a guilty urge to steal them and take them home, pin them up around the head of his bed and prostrate himself on the pillows. The whole room was like a photo album, or a keepsake, or (he had to think this, he couldn't resist thinking this) a shrine.

A curious noise made him look round.

Lysandre was standing in the doorway of the old chapel, his eyes huge and the colour draining from his face. The noise had come from him and he made it again, at the back of his throat – a cry, corrupted by a tightening throat into a strangled whimper. He was holding one of the journals to his chest. Professor Sycamore, still feeling woozy and disjointed from the impression that he had willed this room into being, reached out for him apologetically. Lysandre caught his breath and backed out of the room, his wide eyes locked on the unfinished portrait in the enclave.

He had to push past the tapestry to get out again and this made him stumble. Professor Sycamore had never seen him stumble before. He followed the stunned Comte out of the room.

"Lysandre," he said softly. "Listen to me. You need to sit down."

He reached out again, this time taking Lysandre's arm, but Lysandre shoved him away.

"Don't," he said, but his voice was nothing like his own – faint, scared, almost boyish. "I don't- I don't- I don't-"

"I'll get you some water," said Professor Sycamore. "Sit. Sit down. You're in shock." I'm in shock too, he thought. But I feel as smooth and glassy as a mirror, that's nice.

He tried to push Lysandre into the chair behind the desk but Lysandre slapped his hand away.

"I saw the journals," he said in that strange new voice.

"What did they say?" asked Professor Sycamore.

"I don't- I can't-" Lysandre shook his head, hard. "I read an entry, it was- unbelievable." He blinked, then suddenly thrust the journal he was holding at Professor Sycamore. "Read it," he said.

Professor Sycamore took it gently from him. "You want me to read something in here?"

"I want you to read it aloud. I can't read it. I want to hear it in your voice. I can't face it."

Lysandre looked worse than he had after the 'unfortunate interlude' of the swimming incident. He looked worse than he had on the garrison bed in the cellar. He looked like something was being torn apart inside him, and his face was white and sickly.

"Alright," said Professor Sycamore soothingly. "Which bit do you want me to read?"

"Just pick something at random," said Lysandre. "All the entries start with remarks on the estate Pokémon and the household staff. Skip past those. You'll know when. His handwriting changes." He passed a shaking hand over his face. "Even his handwriting changes."

Professor Sycamore opened the journal. It seemed to be a dense block of dry observations, the long and dull but necessary notes of the head of a large estate. But as he flicked through it, he noticed sections, hidden within the wall of text, that seemed to be tighter, spikier. They were hard to notice, disguised as they were in plain view.

He read:

_– was remarkably unafraid once we got in the air. I held him tight in my arms, of course, but his child's face was fearless. I can see already that he will be strong and brave, stronger and braver than I ever will be. _

_Danton flew us in a low circle over the estates. I fear that I succumbed to cliché; I pointed out the lakes and the township, the dark forests of my youth, their shadowy tunnels, the heath in its beautiful indifference, the endless wonderful wastes of the open sky and I told him, some day, Lysandre, this will all be yours._

_When we landed he was cold from the flight and shaking but his eyes were bright and he smiled at me. C. met us at the stables. She had the nanny with her, who plucked my son out of my arms as if I were a kidnapper. C. threw a most disgusting and unbecoming fit. She slapped me and spat and claimed I was endangering the life of our child. I slapped her back and she made quite a thing of it – _

"Stop," said Lysandre sharply. "Enough."

Professor Sycamore closed the journal. There were so many questions that he wanted to ask, his tongue was tied with them. He managed to force out, "Who is Danton?"

"My father's Charizard," said Lysandre.

"Do you- do you remember this flight?"

"I checked the dates at the front of the journal. I was barely three years old. No wonder my mother hit him."

Lysandre spoke with a sort of quiet horror, like a man trying to remember a bad dream. He fumbled at the spines of the journals and pulled another one out at random, this one further along the shelf. He tugged the journal Professor Sycamore was holding out of his hands, dropped it negligently and gave him the new one.

"Read," he said. "From anywhere. Read."

Professor Sycamore opened the journal, scanned and skipped until he thought he recognised the right place:

_ – not seem to be getting on with the Houndour as well as I hoped. He has inherited some of his mother's tiresome softness. I can see it climbing in him like a strangulating creeper, I fear it will overpower his growth. I try to teach by example, standing firm and hard. I do not coddle him. I do not indulge him. He must learn to flourish in adversity._

_Sometimes it is hard not to put my arms around him, as I have seen wretched C. do so many times. He is only ten. He is a good lad. I have seen him playing with the village children like a babyish godling directing his subjects. He takes that grotesque Purugly with him, they adore it. It is hard not to touch him._

_It is better, though, that I do not touch him. I fear, since that night in the laundry room, that I've had that sickness inside me, that le vieux diable placed in me, the rotten filth. No, I will not touch the boy. It could come on suddenly. What if I am incubating the same sickness that le vieux diable had? Passed from flesh to flesh like a virus – _

"Stop," said Lysandre. "Stop."

"What does it mean?" asked Professor Sycamore, bewildered, but Lysandre was already agitatedly pulling another journal out, knocking the one Professor Sycamore held out of his hands, forcing the new one on him.

"Read," he said, sharp and fraught.

Professor Sycamore tried another random passage:

_– planning to apply for a university abroad! Well, he is too old for me to beat him now, but I told him what I thought of the idea in words vehement enough to mimic a beating. How can I protect him from there? They will warp him, those outregioners and their filthy foreign ways! _

_Or perhaps it is the right thing. Perhaps he is old enough now to defend himself from the plagues and weaknesses of this world without my guidance. He met my eye without flinching, even after what I'd called him, and I wanted to take him by the shoulders, shake him, tell him how fine and strong he looked, my son, or slap him hard. I have no other recourse – _

"Stop."

Another journal, another passage. This one was pulled from much earlier in the shelves. Lysandre was moving jerkily, like a malfunctioning machine.

_ – in, though I had posted guards at the door. He was followed by one of the footmen, a young fellow called, I think, Gagnon, whose nose was bleeding a thick blackish blood, like tarry mucus. It's strange, what you remember when you're terrified._

_I told him to get out but I was overcome with fear, so excruciating that I thought I vomit or soil myself. He has that hold on me, le vieux diable._

_He asked to see the baby and I told him to stay away. I shouted. The footman took him by the arm and tried to force him back out of the door, but he struck him again. The footman did not strike back but his hand was steady on le vieux diable's arm. _

_Do you know who I am, said le vieux diable. I could have you shot. Perhaps I will have you shot. Do you know who I am?_

_I know who you are, Seigneur, said the footman._

_I had to intervene. Although I could not bear to lay my naked palm on any part of his body, I had to. I think I would put my eyes out if I saw him anywhere near the baby – _

Here Professor Sycamore stopped. "I don't understand," he said, disorientated. "This old devil, he's a real person? I thought that was a, uh, a spiritual allergory."

"It's what he called my grandfather," said Lysandre hoarsely.

"But this sounds like- I thought your grandfather died before you were born?"

"That's what I was told," said Lysandre. "That's what they told me."

He hands were already on another journal, and he did it again – dragged the journal out of Professor Sycamore's hands, replaced it with a new one.

Professor Sycamore read:

–_ locked in his bedroom. He did not cry, I was impressed with that, even through the disappointment. He must have had his tears whipped out of him; whippings are useful in that way._

_We fished the poor foolish creature's body out of the well just as the sun was rising – _

"No!" Lysandre shouted, and seized the journal from Professor Sycamore, hurting the Professor's fingers as he did so. He threw this journal across the room, grabbed another one from the early half of the shelf and tossed it to the Professor, who caught it and opened it unsurely but obediently rifled through the pages and began to read:

– _been assured he would be out of Calincourt, possibly out of Kalos, over the eastern border, but of course le vieux diable would have planted that story. How can I have been so stupid?_

_He came in through the subterranean passage that leads to the servants' quarters in the cellars. I knew the boy was playing in the old rose gardens; the nanny and the Umbreon Rousseau were watching him (Rousseau making a better job of it than that simple peasant woman and her stinking peasant ways). C. in her chambers, I suppose. _

_Portsois, the butler, let him in (they must have planned it), but he was seen by my valet Gagnon, who ran to find me. He had my sword and I took it from him. Let this be my testimony, between myself and Arceus. __**I took the sword**__. I did not call for my Pokémon. I locked Gagnon in my bedroom. There are dents in the door from where he tried to break out and come to me – let the jury of the everafter see them. __**I was alone. **__I was alone when I reached the laundry room. _

Professor Sycamore hesitated.

"Read," said Lysandre. "Read it."

I don't think this is a good idea, thought Professor Sycamore, but the Comte's eyes compelled him. They had an unseeing spark, savage and lustrous.

_Le vieux diable was waiting for me there, as if he had anticipated it all. Perhaps he had._

_I insist that you let me see my grandson, he said, in this sickening, false-wheedling voice, putting on the part of a frail old man._

_I told him I would rather kill him and burn the château to the ground and he laughed mockingly._

_That's a fine and traditional way to inherit the title, he said, but I think you won't. I think you know what happens to boys who are bad._

_I thought I would crumple then, I felt so sick, but I stood firm. I would not let him do to my son what he did to me. I saw, in my mind's eye, his shadow on the the wall in Lysandre's bedroom, his creeping shade, and I raised the sword._

_Now, now, said le vieux diable. Let's not be a bad boy. Let's not scream and struggle and shout. You know what happens to boys who make a fuss. I just want to see him, that's all. _

_When I did not respond but kept my sword raised, he laughed and said, Let's see what you've managed to produce on that damp and useless bride of yours. What a droll pair you make, the two of you – quivering and dripping like a couple of orifices between the legs of some pestilent whore. You're no better than a woman yourself, Lazare. I'm surprised you managed to make any use of that sad knot of rope between your legs. You've never managed to, before._

_Well, I am used to his words, they don't affect me anymore. I have carried them inside me for years, I am the bowl he has coughed his phlegm into, I am my father's chamberpot. Then he said, I've dealt with you, my lad, and you're as wet as a woman. Let's hope this one has more of a rod in his back, and between his legs, eh? _

_I felt putrid. All the old childhood shame came back to me. Why me and not my brother or my sister? Is it because I was the eldest? Was I born marked with dirt? Perhaps the dirt passes along the bloodline directly, heir to heir, a hereditary muck. _

_But I thought of Lysandre, his brave clear face, six years old and as smart and quick as an Abra. I was six when it started, of this I am fairly sure. But Lysandre was born clean and I will keep him clean. He will be Ice and he will be Fire. He will never show weakness, so that no one will ever hurt him._

_I cannot think clearly on it now – my hand is unsteady, I see I am writing off the lines. I do not have the right of it in my head, but I believe I said something like: My son will be strong and white and pure and the corruption will die in me._

_At least, I think I spoke. I hope to Arceus that I spoke before I did it. _

_If it's not one thing it's t'other. We're all mad here, le vieux diable said, in that bedtime sing-song that made my bowels watery. Oh, we're all quite mad here._

_Then suddenly he was next to me, his vampire's face by mine, his lips level with my eyes. I thought he might blind me with the poison of his tongue, or suck out my eyeballs. He gripped my sword wrist and he hissed in my ear: Let me see him. Consider it an apology. Let me see him. You must let me see my grandson._

_That was when I did it. _

_You see, they have this machines for winding out the sheets in the laundry, and I had this notion that the filth was somehow inside his guts, and I'd better wind it all out. The first cut – _

"Stop! Oh god, stop."

Professor Sycamore dropped the journal.

"What did I just read," he asked hoarsely.

Lysandre's shoulders were juddering and his breathing was jagged. He wiped his hand across his mouth, then cast about wildly and seized another journal, from the far end of the shelf.

"No, Lysandre, no more," said Professor Sycamore, but when Lysandre fingers touched his, pushing the journal into his hands, he felt their clammy, and when he met the blue eyes, he saw them blossoming into a perfect icy hysteria.

"Read," said Lysandre.

He could not deny that voice. He flicked through it again, eventually found:

_– spoke with Gagnon about the possibility of formalising the structure of this loose organisation. We need foot soldiers as much as we need quartermasters, to push the metaphor (or not just a metaphor?) – _

"No, not that," Lysandre barked, wheeling on the Professor. "Find something else. Keep looking."

Professor Sycamore, who had flinched, turned the pages with nervous fingers. He found:

_– been five years since I last saw my son._

_There is news of him everywhere. Even guests who should know better mention his work to me (and guests who know very well bring me useful reports on his activities.) I follow his progress carefully; I am, after all, his benefactor. _

_He is everything I hoped he would be, bones built in him, flesh filled, he is the man I should have been. I am so proud._

_Although. Sometimes, when the nights are long and the days are dark, or worse, when the days are long and bright and the dearest cleanness of the world seems attainable, I wonder whether I could have let me guard down, once. Perhaps, just once, I should have told him how much I love him._

Professor Sycamore stopped reading at this point. As he read the words, he felt himself tearing up, the telltale lump at the back of his throat. Lysandre reached out and, very softly, pushed the journal out of his hands so that it fell to the floor.

Through the mist of tears (I cry at everything, thought Professor Sycamore, I am a great crier, that's what I'm here for), he saw Lysandre reach unsteadily for another journal, close to the start of the shelf.

He handed it to Professor Sycamore slowly.

Professor Sycamore, running on automatic, opened it near the beginning.

_ – weeks old, and the preserve of the nursery, but today I was brought in to see the heir I had somehow produced with C. I assume he was conceived on the wedding night; we have successfully avoided one another since. Arecus, I wish I could have married a woman with a bit of bile and fire in her! She may have money and titles but she has no soul. Le vieux diable always said that women don't. I'm not sure he's correct, the old misogynist, but my wife seems determined to prove him right. _

_Life has been a great messy waste so far. My brother and mother dead for a decade or more, in that stupid flying accident, my sister an émigré, chained to her freedom in an outregioner's court, sending me her torn Kalosian passport instead of a wedding invitation. Lothaire du Feu, le vieux diable, well, he is like a cancer across my existence. In truth, I rather resented the heir being born; the Comte would undoubtedly insist on seeing the second in line. It has been many years since I last saw him and I had hoped to have many more. _

_When they brought the heir out to see me, he was asleep and wrapped in blankets. But when I took him in my arms – C. forced me to, I would not have touched him otherwise, what interest did I have in babies? – he opened his eyes. _

_Such eyes! They are blue and bright and fair. And as I was staring at them, quite shocked – has a du Feu ever had eyes so blue and bright and fair? – he smiled at me, and my heart was flooded with a fierce, all-consuming joy. The room was nothing, the people around me were nothing. He was everything._

_I am a father!_

_I looked at him and I vowed that, today, that apathy would end. I was no longer the sickly heartcripple, I would not watch the world sink into its own filth with nihilistic pleasure. No, the world is charged with meaning for me now._

_At last, I have someone worth fighting for._

Professor Sycamore stopped and shut the journal. He was trembling and thinking, oh god, the old Comte, that poor bastard. He was trying not to think about what must have happened in the laundry room, or, worse, why.

Lysandre carefully took the journal from him and rifled through its pages.

"Isn't it peculiar, Professor?" he said, in a mild conversational tone, and Professor Sycamore started.

"I- you- peculiar?"

"Yes," said Lysandre placidly, "peculiar. Just think, when I was a child and I crept up here, I could have opened any journal, at any page. I just happened to light on the start of an entry, which were always about the running of the estate. Just think. I might have found out much sooner."

He tossed the book lightly into the air, caught it. "Just think," he said. "I was only a few days late. Or a lifetime. Whichever way you look at it."

He tossed the book up again, caught it. "It's a funny old world," he said.

He tossed the book up again, caught it, and then threw it hard against the wall.

Then he turned to the shelf of journals and, with animal franticness, tore them out of the shelf. The bookcase wobbled and he kicked it, grabbed and clawed at the other shelves, watched the books falling around him.

Professor Sycamore stood frozen.

Lysandre, breathing hard, spun, stared wildly around the room, and saw the delicate glass desk ornament on the desk. He seized this and hurled it against another wall, was already sweeping the papers off the desk and tearing pages out of the ledger when the ornament shattered, the fragments flashing briefly in the air like a swarm of glinting bees.

He grabbed the chair behind the desk, smashed it again and again against the wide desk until one of the legs broke. He overturned the desk with an almighty crash, then he started to tear down the pictures and maps on the walls. The air was filled with the dangerous percussion of breaking glass.

Professor Sycamore stayed still and watched the Comte destroying the room.

When Lysandre came to the old photograph of the Charmeleon and the Dratini, he grabbed it and threw it against the window, where it smashed through one of the panes and vanished into the dark outside. A blast of cold air struck them both and Lysandre stopped, panting.

He pushed past the Professor and walked towards the broken window, his eyes fixed on the cloud-weary sky outside. Whatever frenzy had overtaken him had gone out into the night with the photograph. He put one hand on the overturned desk and slowly, slowly got to his knees.

It took Professor Sycamore a couple of seconds to realise that Lysandre was crying.

He had never seen Lysandre cry before.

It was the most extraordinary thing. It was like watching a bird's wing breaking. The torn papers moved around him in the cold breeze from the window, like the ghosts of stories.

Lysandre dragged both his hands into his hair and started to sob like a child. He knelt on the floor, dragging his hands through his hair, rocking back and forth so deeply that his forehead struck the ground, and he sobbed, deep, racking, noisy sobs that funnelled up from some awful cavity within him.

Professor Sycamore was confused, and drunk, and hopelessly tied to the man on the floor in front of him. When he heard Lysandre cry, the last bond of self-restraint broke inside him. He had never had a friend that he was frightened to touch before. But he had never seen a dear friend crying and not reached out for them.

He knelt behind Lysandre and put his arms around him, wrapping the beloved body in an unsure embrace. He felt Lysandre's chest heaving against the encirclement of his arms, and he tightened them around him and pressed his cheek against the back of Lysandre's neck. His smell was musky, warm and clean, like a night-opening flower, or the city after the rain.

He felt Lysandre's sobs against his own body bowed over him, and it hurt him so much. He held him and bound him, keeping him caught in the circle of his arms, until Lysandre stopped sobbing and his breathing slowed. He matched the rise and fall of his chest to Lysandre's, so that they breathed in perfect unison, and he thought, let me. Let me comfort you.

Without quite knowing what he was doing (because surely, otherwise, he would have stopped himself), he turned his head and pressed his lips against the nape of Lysandre's neck.

His mouth felt hot and Lysandre's skin felt hot; the contact was febrile, overwhelming. He tried to pull back but found himself desperately pressing his mouth against the first hard bump of Lysandre's spine, and then again to the side of his throat, where the pulse under his lips flickered and jumped.

Lysandre tore himself out of Professor Sycamore's arms and turned towards him, on the floor.

They stared at each other. Lysandre's eyes were wide again, but his face looked strangely clear; the tears, rather than blotching his skin, had appeared to wash his face into a luminous, unreal beauty.

"Why did you do that?" he asked, his voice harsh.

It took approximately a second for Professor Sycamore to think coherently, but as soon as he could, he thought _DISASTER OH MY GOD GET OUT_.

"I'm so sorry," he squeaked, and scrambled upright.

"Why did you do that?" Lysandre repeated, getting up, but Professor Sycamore was already heading towards the door.

"I'm so sorry," he repeated. "I didn't mean to- I have to leave. I'm so sorry. I'll be gone tomorrow –"

Lysandre seized his wrist and Professor Sycamore gasped. The Comte had a grip like a vice.

"Look at me," said Lysandre savagely. "Why did you do that?"

Professor Sycamore thought of saying, You were crying and I panicked. He thought of saying, I was just trying to be comforting, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to overstep the mark. He thought of saying, because fuck you, that's why.

But he was going tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference anyway. It was over. He may as well unburden himself, or else he'd take it to his grave, like Lazare du Feu.

"Because I've always wanted to," he said, simply.

Lysandre dropped his wrist and stepped back. His hand was in front of his mouth and Professor Sycamore could not meet his eyes. He stared at the carpet and rubbed his wrist, waiting for the shame to blind and deafen him. Then Lysandre moved towards him.

They say, in the beginning, Arceus spun the world out of the nothingness and blessed the planet with life, not out of kindness or goodness but out of love, a ready and certain love for the forms that would wake up and begin the business of living. They say the void was filled with a strange music, played in the hollows of the universe, and it fragmented into a thousand thousand joyous notes that formed the voices of the people and Pokémon on the land, in the air and in the seas. There were no human witnesses, of course, but that is what they say.

And from the world that Arceus had created, Man sprang forth and built himself a rude hut, then a politer one, with clean flagstones on the floors. He taught himself to make fire, he taught himself to hunt, and at some point on his meandering way he taught himself to make Pokéballs, lightbulbs, double-breasted suits, home computers, toothbrushes, systems of government, war and justice. From the raw earth sprang inventions as bizarre as the traffic light, which existed because traffic existed, because roads and vehicles existed, because the concept of travel existed, because there was anywhere to travel at all.

Professor Sycamore felt as if the world, in its hugely complex and impossible existence (whether crafted by Arceus at a holy beginning or else churned out of the empty absence like a beautiful improbable firework) had been tearing along its path as invention followed invention, progress overtook progress, people lived and loved and fought and sang and died, all this time narrowing to a point, all of the universe's momentum had been leading up to the moment, that moment, this very moment now, when Lysandre du Feu put his hands on his shoulders and kissed him.

The kiss was an infinitely tender, infinitely sweet thing.

They kissed and kissed and kept kissing. Professor Sycamore's arms were around Lysandre's neck, Lysandre's arms were around his waist, pulling him up into a kiss that felt as if it could last a lifetime.

When they pulled back, they were speechless. They stared at each other searchingly. Professor Sycamore was thinking, How could I have missed this? But how could I have known? And, Oh god, everything I wanted, at long last. Don't let it be a dream. Don't let me ever wake, if I am dreaming. Let me die in my sleep.

He ran his fingers wonderingly down Lysandre's cheek, along the perfect curve of his cheekbone, the suggestion of stubble close to his beard. He drew his fingers across Lysandre's parted lips and watched the lips close gently around his fingertips, Lysandre's eyes shutting with a sort of pain as he kissed his fingers, his tongue touching the very tips.

Lysande made a noise between a groan and a sigh, then pushed Professor Sycamore against the wall.

This time, when he bent to kiss him, his kisses were hard and rough. Professor Sycamore returned them, tasting each one hungrily. They were smoky and also tasted of iron, they had chocolate in them but undertones of something more like honey. He found himself biting at Lysandre's mouth and then making gasping, high-pitched sounds when Lysandre lifted him off his feet, against the wall, to kiss his throat and sink his teeth into the side of his neck. He cried out, tangled his fingers in Lysandre's hair and pressed Lysandre's head against his throat. He wanted to say, "Mark me, leave your mark on me," but it came out as little noises.

They attacked one another, biting and kissing. Professor Sycamore put his mouth against the white column of Lysandre's neck and scraped his teeth along the long lines of his throat. He kissed messily, licking like an animal. He pulled at the neck of Lysandre jumper, revealing the edge of one white shoulder, and sank his teeth into the exposed flesh. Lysandre growled and tore at the buttons on Professor Sycamore's shirt, nuzzled and bit, leaving lovebites scattered along the Professor's collarbone.

When Professor Sycamore, whose hands are been frantically clawing at Lysandre jumper, feeling the firm body inside it, managed to slide his hands underneath so that he could press a palm against Lysandre's stomach, the Comte flinched and pulled back.

They blinked at one another, out of breath. Professor Sycamore's lips were throbbing, and so, quite frankly, was his cock.

"Lys?" he said, his voice high. "Lysandre? What is it?"

"Not here," muttered Lysandre. "We can't, not here."

"Where, then?"

Lysandre bit his bottom lip and Professor Sycamore felt a sort of crazy triumph – yes! I have kissed those lips! Finally!

"My old bedroom," said Lysandre. "Quickly!"

He grabbed Professor Sycamore's hand and pulled him out of the door.

They moved past the remains of their sad dinner – how many hours ago that seemed now! – almost at a run, and they were out into the corridor and hurrying across it hand in hand. Professor Sycamore was giddy. He was just about able to think, oh my goodness, and, eeeeeeeeeee.

"Merde!" Lysandre exclaimed suddenly, and pulled him into a side passage. "Quick! In here!"

He was scrabbling for a door handle behind them. Professor Sycamore reached down and opened it, and Lysandre pushed him inside.

The room appeared to be a disused drawing room, kept clean and neat. Lysandre shut the door behind him and pressed one of his ears against it. Professor Sycamore admired the flawless lines of his nose and the delicious obviousness of his erection. He pressed himself against Lysandre.

"What are we hiding from?" he whispered.

"Servants," Lysandre whispered back. "I saw a footman coming up the corridor. Probably on his way to the Red Chambers."

"Mon dieu, he's in for a surprise," said Professor Sycamore. Lysandre caught his eye and they both began to laugh.

"Shh, shh!" said Lysandre, muffling his laughter with his hand. "Be quiet. Oh, you're so lovely, be quiet."

"Make me," said Professor Sycamore, wild with happiness, and Lysandre's lips smothered his own. He wrapped his arms around Lysandre's neck again. The Comte's arms captured him and bent him back, so that he was defenceless against the kiss, clinging to him for balance. His hips bucked instinctively against Lysandre's, and he was gratified, terrified and aroused to feel his hardness meet an answering hardness there.

When Lysandre pulled back to listen at the door again, Professor Sycamore slid his hand into the top of Lysandre's trousers. He could only reach down an inch or so – not nearly far enough to touch what he wanted to touch – but as soon as his finger tips grazed against a rough burr of hair below the belt, he saw Lysandre's pupils dilate and felt a thrill of power.

"Can we go to your bedroom now?" he whispered.

Lysandre nodded, breathless, and opened the door a crack to peek out.

"I think they're gone," he whispered back.

"Who cares if they're not?" Professor Sycamore said. "Why don't you just tell them that you're the Comte and you'll make out with your guests when you want?"

Lysandre laughed and took Professor Sycamore's hand again. They were out onto the corridor and running up it like a couple of naughty schoolboys in a flash.

Professor Sycamore had that feeling of heightened awareness and unsteadying, erotic dislocation that he had only experienced in the depths of fever dreams. He tried to break it down into its component senses but it eluded him, his rational thoughts blotted out by a ferocious, shouting joy in his head. He had 'heightened awareness' but could not say what he was experience more keenly – he just knew that his body felt bolder, brighter, livelier than it ever had. He was dislocated, at an angle from reality, unsteady in his self and his perceptions, but it was the most intense, most erotic way of existing that he had ever experienced.

Lysandre's old bedroom was set at the top of one of the turrets. There was a bed in the middle of the round room and that was all that Professor Sycamore noticed. When he saw the bed he felt the first hysterical tug of panic and he thought, this is happening, this is really going to happen.

Lysandre, still holding his hand, swung him round so that they were nose to nose and mouth to mouth again. Professor Sycamore could feel the Comte's violently beating heart against his chest; it felt as if they were sharing heartbeats.

They had been kissing and haphazardly undressing one another in grabbed fits and bursts – Lysandre was down to his shirt, his cashmere jumper lying where it had been tossed, Professor Sycamore's heavy flannel shirt was now open to his stomach, although Lysandre hadn't had the patience to deal with buttons and had simply torn it down the middle – and stumbling towards the bed. They reached it when Professor Sycamore, who was being pushed back by Lysandre, bashed into it and toppled over on to it.

Oh mon dieu, he thought, oh mon dieu, I'm on the bed.

His body kept on seizing up and he realised he was trembling uncontrollably, as if he had been pushed into the cold, but he felt hot and so sensitive that he was sure he could count each individual thread in the bedsheets under his palm. His cock ached where it was forced, by its thickening, against his tight jeans.

Lysandre stood over him for a few moments, chewing on his lips. His eyes were travelling all over Professor Sycamore's half-undressed body, wild and darting, as if he wanted to take everything in at once but was also trying to capture tiny details. Professor Sycamore could see his hands clenching and unclenching.

He heard his voice saying Lysandre's name, in a breathy, frightened, hungry way he'd never used before. He was astonished at all the ways his body was giving him away. Lysandre breathed out shakily and leaned down to kiss him again. The weight of him was almost too real. Professor Sycamore shuddered convulsively, rendered physically incoherent by desire and fear.

With quivering fingers he managed to unbutton the rest of Lysandre's shirt, pulling it off, and couldn't stop himself making more pathetic little noises when he dug his nails into the broad hard chest, tangled his fingers into the golden-red fur on Lysandre's chest. Lysandre gasped and bit his earlobe.

Lysandre knelt up and and tore Professor Sycamore out of his shirt. The Professor gave a sort of startled cry as Lysandre threw the shirt aside and seized his body, the long, strong fingers digging in to the gaps between his ribs. Lysandre was wearing that pained expression again, like something was hurting him with a deep, slow-folding pain.

When he leaned down again, Professor Sycamore tried to brace himself for the next rough contact, but Lysandre kissed his throat very tenderly. The heavy head with its mane of red rested against the curve of his throat for a second, then Lysandre started to slowly work his way down Professor Sycamore's body, exploring with his lips and tongue and hands. It was done with such care, an almost worshipful attention, that it made Professor Sycamore feel simultaneously exposed and beautiful.

He was sweating, he realised, out of nerves and lust, and he wondered whether Lysandre could taste the salt of it. He raised himself up on an unsteady elbow (his body still shaking madly) and watched Lysandre flatten down the tuft of black hair on his breastbone with one long lick, suck each nipple until it blossomed from orchid-pink to a bruised and sweet cerise. He worked his way down further, nipping gently at the skin on Professor Sycamore's stomach, his hands repeatedly stroking the slight dip of the Professor's waist. The Professor thought again, with confused panic, this is happening, this is really happening!

When Lysandre reached the top of his jeans, sliding off the bed to kneel in front of him, and laid one hand over the bulge of his erection, he squeaked, "Wait!"

Lysandre jerked his hand away and his face flushed. "What? What is it?"

"I, it's, it's just," stammered Professor Sycamore. He flapped his hand at his naked upper body and, when Lysandre gave him a look of half-angry confusion, he flapped again. "I've just, I've never- I've never done- not with- not with a man. I've never done this before. I don't know what- I don't know what to do."

Lysandre's face cleared. It was like watching the sun come out after days and days of rain, especially when he smiled, got up, leaned over, put his mouth by Professor Sycamore's ear and whispered,

"I'll teach you_._"

"Oh," said Professor Sycamore. It came out as a whimper.

Lysandre was back between his legs, his fingers unbuttoning and unzipping. He was serious and intent. He pulled the jeans off first, then bit his lip and stared at the almost pornographically obvious hard-on in the Professor's underwear. When he pulled those off, slowly, succumbing to the delightful cliché of unwrapping the Professor like a present, Professor Sycamore's erection sprang out so hard and eager that he was surprised it didn't go 'boing'.

Lysandre smiled at him again and he smiled anxiously back. Lysandre was still smiling, his eyes locked on Professor Sycamore's, when he gently licked the tip of Professor Sycamore's cock, as delicate as a cat.

It was all too much. It was too real. Professor Sycamore lay back and covered his face with his hands. He heard Lysandre chuckle, then felt the exquisite, over-sharp pleasure of a mouth closing around the head of his cock, a firm hand wrapping around the shaft. Lysandre didn't move for a few seconds, then he unhurriedly took the whole length into his mouth, eliciting another stupid little whinny from Professor Sycamore's lips.

He lay there and let the pure physical pleasure wash over him. He wasn't shaking anymore, or at least not much. Lysandre was working his cock with a languid expertise; he got the impression that Lysandre was showing off, pulling tricks, revelling every time he caused Professor Sycamore to gasp or lift his hips up from the bed.

Professor Sycamore looked again and saw what Lysandre was doing, saw his cock going into those hard-kissed lips, those icy blue eyes closed in amorous contemplation, the eager way Lysandre sucked at it, rolled and caressed with his tongue, and he thought, putain, it's been about three minutes and _I'm going to come_.

He sat up hurriedly, pushed the heel of his palm into Lysandre's forehead, forcing him away, and squeezed the base of his cock, hard. He shut his eyes – the sight of the Comte with his patrician features flushed, his mouth and chin wet with saliva, was too arousing to cope with.

After a few seconds, when he was sure he wouldn't immediately spunk everywhere, he opened his eyes again.

Lysandre was still kneeling between his legs, but now his head was resting on Professor Sycamore's knee and he was smiling up at him with a happy affection. One hand was stroking the back of his calf. It struck him that he'd never really seen Lysandre happy – he'd seen him amused, or interested, or entertained, or, more recently, high as a kite, but he'd never seen him happy.

He'd also never seen Lysandre's cock, which had been pulled out of his trousers and was being languorously tugged at with Lysandre's spare hand.

"Um," he said, and Lysandre laughed.

"Were you enjoying that, Professor?" he said, in an arch voice. "You sounded like you were."

"_Please_ don't call me 'Professor' when I'm naked in your bed," said Professor Sycamore. "_Please_."

Lysandre laughed again and, to Professor Sycamore's frank amazement, blushed, nuzzling his forehead against the Professor's leg. Professor Sycamore felt as if he'd gotten the upper hand and, in a rush of daring, took his head between his hands and kissed him on the mouth, then pulled him on to the bed.

"You have to let me try," he said, and pushed Lysandre back on to the pillows. "I want to try."

Lysandre nodded, suddenly breathless.

He finished undressing Lysandre with the same slowness as Lysandre had undressed him and, when he was naked, he made Lysandre lie flat so that he could run his hands all over that adored body. He repeated and repeated his movements, following the paths he had imagined taking so many times, trying to fix the sensations in his memory: the way Lysandre rubbed his head against the pillow like a cat, eyes closed with bliss, when he dragged his nails through the hair on his chest; the way Lysandre groaned and his hips bucked fitfully when he traced the hollow of the joint between leg and pelvis; the way Lysandre's hands covered his own when he touched the bandaged wounds, guiding him, encouraging him, as if there was some pleasure to be had in the pain of being touched there.

When he bent Lysandre's legs at the knee, to run his hands along the back of the firm thighs, grope at the glorious arse, he was startled to see quite savage scars on the backs of Lysandre's calves. Some were like bite marks and some were like knife scores; all had an agitated rawness to them. He touched those too, felt Lysandre flinch, and leant down to kiss the damage. It upset him, even, in the depths of him, frightened him, but in the moment nothing about Lysandre was not beautiful.

There was a drop of pre-cum on the tip of Lysandre's cock, which swelled and spilled down the seam, proving that even gravity can be sexy when it puts its mind to it. Professor Sycamore leant down and licked it off. It was sticky, it left a cobweb-thin trail between Lysandre's cock and his mouth when he pulled back, and he caught it with his fingers and lapped it up.

Lysandre made a muffled noise of excitement. He had lifted his head off the pillow to watch and was biting his bottom lip again, hard.

"It always drives me crazy when you bite your lips," said Professor Sycamote huskily.

Lysandre blinked at him. "I bite my lips?" he said.

Professor Sycamore blinked back. "Yes, you- mon dieu! Yes! You bite your lips!"

Lysandre bit them again, then smiled a self-conscious smile and touched his mouth. "What does it make you think about?" he said, and there was a trembling rawness in his voice.

Professor Sycamore lowered his head so that his lips were a breath away from Lysandre's twitching hard-on. "Oh, I used to think about how hard I'd kiss them, how I'd kiss them until I'd made your mouth sore…"

"Yes?"

"And I'd think about you biting me, leaving marks on me, devouring me… oh look, you have actually left little marks on me, you've been quite rough…"

"Yes? Ça te plait? Good. What else?"

"Oh, other things," said Professor Sycamore amiably, "other things too. I'd imagine you doing things like _this_…"

On the whole, it wasn't a bad line for a man to deliver before he started his first blowjob.

The first thing Professor Sycamore did was take it too deep, too quickly; he choked a little and had to draw back. Lysandre murmured, "Doucement, doucement…" and touched his cheek with one hand. The hand was shaking and Professor Sycamore felt that thrill of power again.

He moved more slowly, pressing his tongue against the seam of Lysandre's cock and rhythymically stroking with his hand. Saliva ran over his knuckles and made his grip slippery – he hadn't realised how delectably messy sucking cocks could be. When he pulled back and absentmindedly twisted the cup of his hand over the head of Lysandre's cock, he was rewarded with a groan and the sight of Lysandre arching his back.

He bent back down and started to speed up, listening to Lysandre make impossible, wonderful noises above him. He tried to remember how Lysandre had moved his tongue, tried to mimic it, wasn't sure he'd got it right but was delighted to hear Lysandre moaning. He reached up with his spare hand and started to caress Lysandre's body, already hungry to feel him again, then he ran his thumb around the cool sweet disc of one of Lysandre's nipples, felt it harden at his touch, was surprised that men's nipples did that too.

He was in a close, closed world now, where nothing mattered but the cock in his mouth and the pleasure he could give. Lysandre had started to move his hips upwards everytime his mouth came down, and he realised he was rocking his own hips in the same rhythm, even though he wasn't touching himself.

He felt both of Lysandre's hand tangling in his hair.

"Go slowly," he heard Lysandre say. "You look so lovely. Oh god. Go slowly. That's so good, oh, go slowly, that's good, that's so good…"

Lysandre had started to pant and he thought he could feel his cock perceptibly swelling and hardening in his mouth.

"Oh god, oh Augustine, I'm going to come, you're going to make me come, I'm going to, oh Augustine, _oh Augustine, oh_ –"

Lysandre let go of his head and grabbed at the bedsheets, pulling them up.

He filled Professor Sycamore's mouth in a series of hot pulses. There was more of it than he was expecting, and it had a complex, elemental flavour to it that was earthy and lovely. He swallowed and then gave the tip of Lysandre's cock one last hard lick, to see if he could taste it again. Lysandre groaned.

He sat up and wiped his mouth.

Lysandre's face and cock had flushed the same deep petal pink colour and he was breathing hard and slow. His blue eyes had misted over, turning almost silver.

"Salut," said Professor Sycamore, and Lysandre chuckled unsteadily.

"You learn fast," he mumbled.

"You're a good teacher," said Professor Sycamore coquettishly. He was really very hard now, and the sight of Lysandre, sated and defeated below him, just made him harder.

"You've slain me," said Lysandre, a trace of a purr in his voice. "I can't move. Viens ici."

Professor Sycamore knelt in front of him.

"Viens ici," repeated Lysandre lazily. He was tucking another pillow under his head as he said this, raising his head up, and now he reached out and grasped Professor Sycamore hips, pulling him closer.

Professor Sycamore crawled over his body until he was straddling Lysandre's broad chest and his cock was inches away from his lips. He lifted one of Lysandre's hands and sucked two fingers slowly into his mouth. Lysandre sighed and gently hooked his fingers, pulling slightly, so that Professor Sycamore was like something caught on the hook of his hands. It was bizarrely sensuous – it reminded him of that moment in the lake, when Lysandre's had hooked his hair, and for a fleeting moment he wondered how many other chances he had missed before this evening.

He let the hand free, watched it trail lovingly over his chest and stomach, and guided his cock into Lysandre's mouth.

Lysandre was moving with a calm voluptuosness, allowing Professor Sycamore to push into his mouth, guiding the speed and rhthym by holding one of the Professor's hips. The hand with the wet fingers reached around, squeezed Professor Sycamore's arse rather hard, then gently parted him with two fingers and let the middle one sink into him.

Professor Sycamore had done the same thing to himself, usually while he was masturbating in a state of self-abasement. This, because it was done when he felt triumphant, desired, aroused, and because it was done by someone else, was so much more acutely pleasurable. He whimpered and threw his head back, felt his body take over while his mind went blank.

He was caught between two poles of pleasure: one when he rocked forward and pushed his cock into Lysandre's mouth, and one when he rocked back and Lysandre's delicately exploratory fingers sank deeper into him. The second sensation was subtler, stranger, but the double waves of sensuousness met in him, rippled and rolled up through him.

He felt his orgasm building and he put one hand on Lysandre's head, pushing in deeper. His thighs were tensing. He was making soft whimpering noises that were turning into cries, he was crying out with pleasure, he was saying Lysandre's name like a prayer.

When he came, he felt as if he was lifting and leaving his body, as if, in a state of ecstatic worship, he had succeeded in touching the divine. When his vision cleared and he was able to look down again, he saw Lysandre smiling up at him (swallowing with refinement) and he thought, wow, that was a really great orgasm, I can't believe I just thought the phrase 'touching the divine'.

"Well," said Lysandre.

"Um," said Professor Sycamore, and toppled over.

They reached for each other at the same time, drew one another close. He felt so happy that it was making him ache – his body could barely cope with the wonder of it. He thought he might cry, because he was so overwhelmed with happiness.

Lysandre was stroking his hair, his face relaxed and contented. It occurred to Professor Sycamore that he'd never seen Lysandre relaxed or contented either; it made him look almost boyish, or like a wicked, precocious, adorable youth, as young as an undergraduate, as gorgeous and available as he must have been in his years at Taurosbridge. Some gap was being closed between them, the years that Professor Sycamore hadn't known him, hadn't adored him, were eroding in the cool light of the man's blue gaze.

It only lasted a minute or so, while the afterglow ebbed around then. When they were both breathing normally again, their bodies no longer alight from the inside, Lysandre suddenly frowned and said quietly,

"How long?"

Professor Sycamore almost responded with the automatic, 'what do you mean?' but saved himself. He knew what Lysandre meant.

"Since that night at La Jolie Gardevoir. Three days after we met! That's ridiculous, isn't it? We shared a cigarette. Actually, before that, when I found you at the bar and you were drunk. Everything about you disturbed me and I couldn't work out why until we had that cigarette and I saw how bitten your lips were. After that I could hardly make excuses to myself; why else would a man get so fixated on another man's mouth?"

He curled his legs around Lysandre's – it wasn't completely comfortable, but he wanted to wrap himself around the man, he was still craving touch and warmth, he wasn't sure he'd ever be rid of that craving – and buried his face in his chest. Hm, I like chest hair, he thought, imagine that.

"Et tu?" he asked, muffled.

Lysandre's didn't answer for a few seconds, still dreamily stroking his hair and arm and back. When he eventually did, he said,

"The very first moment I saw you."

Professor Sycamore squeezed the thigh between his thighs. "C'est vrai?"

"Yes. The very moment. You were perfect. I knew what was going to happen."

"You mean, you always knew we'd end up in bed? Because if you did, I wish you'd bloody told me earlier."

"No, I don't mean that," said Lysandre, with a hint of his old condescension. "How could I have predicted that? I mean I knew what you'd do to me."

This last sentence was delivered in a troubled tone, and Professor Sycamore felt Lysandre tensing up. "What I'd do to you?" he whispered.

"What you've done to me." At this, Lysandre suddenly pulled back so that he could glare down in Professor Sycamore's face. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, and he sounded angry. "If you had any idea how hard it's been for me –"

"How hard it's been for you?" Professor Sycamore repeated incredulously. "Do you have any idea how hard it's been for _me_? You switch yourself off, you turn to ice, you sneer at me –"

"I've never sneered –"

"Oh yes you have! And you flinch when I touch you –"

"I didn't want to give myself away!" Lysandre snarled. "Whenever you touch me, I feel so weak, I- And you touch _everyone_, all the time. You _flirt_ with everyone. You flirt with the whole world! And you were screwing that big-titted journalist, you know the one –"

"Don't you dare talk about Marie like that," Professor Sycamore snapped. A bilious mess of emotions was rising in him – indignation, fury, resentment, the uncomfortable knowledge that Lysandre sounded sexy when he was angry.

"Well, you always used to treat me like this strange aberration," said Lysandre, changing tack, a suddenly disturbed look in his eyes.

"_You_ used to treat _me_ like a camp grotesque you kept around because I learned to do a few clever tricks!" Professor Sycamore shouted.

"I treated you like that because you act like one!" Lysandre shouted back. "Now you're telling me you're some kind of secret tormented lover? You're a caricature of yourself! You're not even real! What was I supposed to do, fucking rifle through your masks until I found the one that fitted?"

He stopped abruptly, his face white. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that. Well, I meant some of- no, don't. I'm sorry. Don't cry."

Professor Sycamore hadn't realised he'd started crying, but as soon as he noticed, he did what any reasonable person does when they're asked not to cry, viz., they cry harder.

"Please don't," said Lysandre. "I'm sorry. Stop crying. Stop it."

Professor Sycamore lay down and curled himself into a ball, sobbing on to his knees. It was a reaction lacking in emotional maturity but he felt like it was the only appropriate one. He wished he wasn't naked; he felt too vulnerable.

He wanted to say, "Mon dieu, this is so dreadfully mundane, we've finally revealed ourselves to each other and had the most incredible sex, and we're already having a domestic?" But he couldn't get beyond 'mon dieu', and this came out as a sob in any case.

He felt Lysandre tugging the covers out from under him, then covering him with them. He was still blubbing when Lysandre inched closer and tried to take him in his arms again.

"Leave me alone," he said through the tears, even as he was uncurling himself and curving into Lysandre's embrace.

"No," said Lysandre quietly, "no, I won't leave you alone."

They were back where they had been before the fight, twining around one another, under the warmth of the covers. Lysandre was stroking him again, his cruel hands comforting and tender, and he was loosening, drifting, still drifting over that undulating desire. He was like a magnet, endlessly turning towards the magnetically charged pole – he was compelled, he could never give it up.

"This will change things, you know," said Lysandre.

He sniffed hard. "I know," he said. His eyes were closed.

"Things cannot be the same," said Lysandre, whose voice was growing distant.

Professor Sycamore had had a very exciting day. He'd had a brisk outdoor swim, he had watched a Dragonite take its own life, he had almost caught pneumonia, he had been discarded by the Comte du Feu, he had eaten a very nice chocolate mousse, he had made some extraordinary discoveries about all three of the most recent Comtes, he had kissed the person he had been in a state of limerence over for more than a year, he had gone to bed with a man for the first time in his life, he'd given a very respectable blowjob, and he'd had an orgasm so intense that he was still feeling its after-effects.

So, although he was technically over the rainbow and out in the galaxy, he was also exhausted – emotionally, physically, psychically. Lysandre's caresses had a pleasantly soporific effect. Already the dark behind his eyes was starting to funnel around the edge and take on a deeper blackness, like a hole, and he was starting to fall forwards into it, night-tumbling, sleep-folding.

Just before he dropped off, he was sure he heard Lysandre whisper, "Sorry that I stole your shirt."

xxxx

Lysandre dreamed.

He dreamed Lumiose City in perfect 1:1000 scale, spread out on the carpet of his bedroom. The buildings were made of tiny interconnecting boxes. They look exquisitely engineered, unbreakable, but when he flicked one, it fragmented into hundreds of pieces, falling into its various component shapes.

Startled, he tried another. It crumbled as well. When he knelt down to look more closely at the model (idly breaking buildings as he did), he thought he could see tiny, flea-sized people, running back on forth along the dollhouse streets. He was unstoppably reminded of the parasites in the fur of wild Pokémon, the little tics and bloodsuckers.

Looking at the tiny people like this, at this scale, made them look disgusting. A single pearl, or a simple string of them, was pleasing to the eye; a pile of pearls, a sea of them, was a revolting extravagance, somehow resembling dandruff or boils in their multitudes. One Vivillion is a delicate beauty; one thousand Vivillion are a pestilent hoarde. There were simply too many flea-sized people and it made them look like a plague of parasites.

"The simplest thing to do would be to pour boiling water over them," said a voice behind him. "Otherwise they get into the house and steal the sugar."

Lysandre looked round. His father, the late Comte du Feu, was standing there, at the window in the study of the Red Chambers. When he looked round again, for the scale model of Lumiose City, it had gone, and all he could see was the door leading out.

"It is a badly kept house that allows such an invasion," the late Comte continued. "If I have taught you anything, Lysandre, it is how to keep things clean."

"You're dead, Father," Lysandre observed.

"And I rise again," replied Lazare. "I take the strips off linen off my hands and feet and I come out out of tomb. Walk with me, Lysandre." He was pointing towards where the tapestry would normally be, but instead there was a long, dark corridor, so shadowed that the edges where the floor and the walls met were indistinguishable.

"Where does this lead?" asked Lysandre.

"Your labs, of course."

"Of course," said Lysandre. Of course. How could he have forgotten? Although, he was only eighteen years old, and Fleur-de-Lis did not yet exist. But perhaps the passage was a gap in time, like the water clock of the lake, or the seemingly eternal year and a half he'd spent in miserable enslavement. As they walked, perhaps he would age until he met his present self coming the other way.

They walked side by side, Lysandre and Lazare.

"What will you put on my gravestone?" asked the late Comte.

"That you died," replied his son. "And that you were my father."

"Ah! You acknowledge it!" said the late Comte, and there was a joy in his voice that Lysandre had almost never heard while he was still alive, and then never directed at him. He stopped and turned in the dark corridor, squinting to make Lazare out.

"Father," he said, "you are fragmenting."

It was true; the boxes he had built around the form of the late Comte were falling into their various component shapes. He felt a sting of regret, because he had worked so hard to make those boxes around him.

"I have to go now, Lysandre," said the late Comte. His voice had a hellish buzzing to it; the boxes of his face were turning and breaking, and in his throat too. He looked like a machine redesigning itself into oblivion. "They only give you a little time."

"Please stay a little longer," said Lysandre stiffly. "I have been so rude, I have not even offered you coffee." There was coffee, on a single table, alone in the dark corridor. It had not been there before, but now that it was there, it had always been there.

"I have to go, my son," said Lazare. "Forgive me. You are so dear to me."

"Please stay," said Lysandre, then, "Please! Father! Don't leave me yet!"

The noise the Comte made was like a tape recorder screaming, he had fragmented so much. Lysandre's boxes were collapsed, and underneath they were revealing something crippled, naked, ghastly and all too human. Lysandre stumbled forward – when had the corridor become so wide? – and tried to take his father in his arms, but even the human thing was dissipating, fading away.

"You can't touch it," said a mild voice. "It is a corpse now, it's buried. Your father is gone."

He turned towards the sound of the voice.

"I am so sorry," the voice added, and it sounded sorry too.

It was coming from the glass box in the corner of the room that Lysandre was suddenly in. He was in Fleur-de-Lis Labs, and this was the old Holo Caster test room.

"Oh," he said, "this dream. I've had this dream before. How are you, Professor?"

"Really, must you insist on calling me Professor?" asked Professor Sycamore, who was indeed curled naked in the corner of the glass box.

"But you are a Professor, Professor," said Lysandre, walking over to look at him. He noticed that, this time, he had dreamed a trapezium of four freckles on the back of Professor Sycamore's left shoulder. In fact, many aspects of the Professor were being dreamed in finer, sharper detail, drawing on his memories. "And this is the box where I keep you."

Professor Sycamore gave him a miserable smile and did something he'd never done before, in a glass box dream – he stood up, walked over to the side where Lysandre stood and pressed one of the panels. The glass slid aside.

"Ta da," he said sadly.

Lysandre stared at him. "How long have you been able to do that?" he asked.

"Oh, a while," said Professor Sycamore. "A matter of days after I first met you, actually."

"Get back in," said Lysandre, horrified, backing away. "You can't just run around here. This is an active laboratory. You'll electrocute yourself, or accidentally eat something poisonous. It's for your own protection. Get back in your box."

The ground juddered beneath them, and there was a far off sound of something collapsing, something huge.

"Oh," said Professor Sycamore, "are you still knocking down Lumiose City?"

"That was only a scale model," said Lysandre. "I was just trying to keep things clean." Another rumble, another crash. Plaster drifted down from the ceiling and the lights flickered.

Professor Sycamore perched himself on the edge of an empty desk, still naked. "You're going to bring the roof down on us, mon ami," he said placidly.

"I know what I'm doing," Lysandre said. "You'll be safe if you only get back in your box."

"Don't be afraid of me," said Professor Sycamore. "Come here to me."

"I need you to get back into the box," said Lysandre, then the roof came in.

Everything was red, everything was pain. He felt freezing and too hot at the same time, he could feel his own blood over his stomach and thighs and it was surprisingly cool. His fingers were crushed and useless and he had gone blind in one eye where the falling masonry had embedded itself. His faltering pulse screeched in his head. He could hear nothing but a sort of fading, falling tinnutis. When he rolled the one good eye down he thought he could see a crescent moon curve of bone protruding from his chest.

"Professor," he tried to call. Then he tried, "Augustine," but his lips never formed the words, the shadows had filled his mouth and stoppered up his throat, and everything was red, everything was pain, everything was slipping away.

He woke up with a strangled cry.

His head felt hot, not hot with a temperature but hot on the brain. A boiling, rolling fog was drifting through it. The shrapnel memories of the day assailed him, digging into his thoughts.

"Get back in your box," he muttered, but could hardly remember why. He'd had a dream, a bad dream. He always had bad dreams. He did not sleep well.

He reached out for Théo, who often slept with him, and felt his hand touch a warm, smooth flesh. Shocked, he pulled his hand back.

It took a few moments for him to remember where he was, and what he'd done, and with whom.

Augustine Sycamore was fast asleep on the other side of the bed. In the gloom, Lysandre could just about see the endlessly gentle set of his features, blurred by sleep. He felt a strange anger building in him: complicated, tender, violent. How had this face managed to lie to him so many times? How had it deflected him? Why was it still so innocent? (And the sub-thoughts whispered, _mon semblable, mon ombre, mon amour, _over and over like the start of a poem.)

The curve of his shoulder was the most threatening and wonderful thing Lysandre had ever seen.

He was sick and confused, he was cut off from the links that tethered him. For two days he'd fought the sensation that he was falling. He'd tried to keep the Professor where he could see him, he tried to keep him under control, he tried to keep himself under control in a world suddenly spiralling out of it. He'd wanted to touch him so badly that he felt always as if his fingers were bleeding. He wanted to hit him. He wanted to excise him forever, suture the wound, shut down, switch off.

And now, here the man himself was, dozing peacefully, as if nothing had happened. (_Mon semblable, mon ombre, mon amour!_) It was those fantasies he had, when the Professor was somehow in his bed, but he was here, he was actually here, he'd broken the glass screen.

The anger kept swelling and swelling, and the desire too, as he watched the sleeping academic, until he found himself very carefully (so as not to wake him) reaching down the side of his bed to grope for his belt, on the floor.

The buckle made a seductive clinking noise.

He thought, It is important that I keep things under control and he thought, _take it take it, he might still flee, you have to break him, take it, you need to break him and remake him in your own shape, take take take take._

Professor Sycamore slept with his hands tucked close to his face. It was very easy for Lysandre to take both wrists and quickly wrap them.

Professor Sycamore mumbled in his sleep, then groaned and tried to stretch, but his wrists were already bound together. The shock of restricted movement must have startled him awake (an animal instinct responding to danger) and so his eyes were already half open when Lysandre started to tie the belt to the bars at the head of the bed.

"Lysandre?" mumbled Professor Sycamore, in a voice thick with sleep. "Wha- what are you doing?"

Lysandre didn't reply, but he whipped the covers off Professor Sycamore's body and the Professor gasped as the cool air hit it. His eyes were wide now, he was completely awake. He tried to move. The buckle clinked.

"Lysandre?" asked Professor Sycamore, his voice strained. "What's happened? What are you doing?"

"Be quiet," said Lysandre, and kissed him hard on the mouth.

It was a cruel kiss, made to hurt. Lysandre kissed those beloved lips and was reminded of crushing strawberries in his mouth. He bit the lower lip hard and Professor Sycamore shrieked. Then he bent his head to kiss the throat and collarbones again, retouching the marks he'd left there.

Professor Sycamore made an animal groaning noise, like something caught in a trap.

He travelled down the Professor's body, leaving the sadistic blossoms of his adoring attention. Professor Sycamore was writhing and kept saying his name, his voice going up at the end, like a question, again and again, "Lysandre? What are you doing? Lysandre?"

When he came to his cock, it was already starting to harden, and when he took it roughly in his mouth, he felt it swell. He was crude and brisk, sucking hard, squeezing his lips around the shaft, drawing it up and out. When he was satisfied with what he'd done, he lifted his head.

There was a bedside table by the bed. There was a top drawer. There was, he knew, an old tin of lubricant in the top drawer, and he reached for the top drawer and opened it. Oh yes, it was still here. He heard the belt buckle clink as the Professor craned to see what was happening.

He knelt in front of him and started to spread the lube over his cock. He was so hard and so aroused that a little pre-cum had started to drip from him, hitting the Professor's stomach.

"Oh god, what are you going to do?" said Professor Sycamore, and then when he took Professor Sycamore's legs, raised them slightly, parted them, he said, "Oh god, no, Lysandre, don't, I'm not ready, I've never- oh god, don't, don't."

The words made him feel ashamed, and shame made him angry, and the anger was unbearably intertwined with desire. The sub-thoughts were whispering, _make him yours, do it now_ and he pressed the tip of his cock against that furled button of muscle, pushed in, felt it resist him, pushed harder.

The Professor made a terrible noise. "Stop, don't, stop, stop!"

But it felt too good to stop, Lysandre knew, he'd wouldn't be able to stop. He drove himself in, deeper and deeper, pushing past the resistance (listening to the belt buckle clinking as the Professor struggled), until he'd forced the Professor to take every last inch.

For a few seconds, he had the restraint to not move, to let him adjust to the cock inside him, but then Professor Sycamore whimpered, "Please," and he gave a snarling groan and started to move, slowly at first, but arching deep into him, rocking his hips.

"Please stop, please, it hurts, please stop," Professor Sycamore was saying, but in a strange, breathy voice, his begging broken up by each thrust. "Oh Lysandre, please, no, please."

He leaned down again to kiss him, all tongues and teeth, graceless and hungry. He bent the Professor's legs back and pushed in, harder and harder. The belt buckle started to clink rhythmically and there were answering creaks from the bed too, as he churned his hips.

He licked Professor Sycamore's face, tasted salt and realised he must have started to weep. He heard groaning, low and constant, groaning and gasping that came in bursts that matched the clinks of the belt buckle, and realised it was coming from his own mouth.

"Oh please, Lysandre," Professor Sycamore was sobbing, "not so fast, it hurts," and then, "Oh god, please, not so fast, keep going, oh god, you're hurting me, you're- oh Lysandre, Lysandre, give it to me, stop, stop, give me more, more, oh god, please, you're hurting, hurt, hurts, I, oh, oh, oh."

The words blurred with the sobs and the creaking of the bed and the clinking of the belt buckle and the noises he himself was making – he was crying out, he realised, with every thrust, each time he cried out 'ah!' and then 'ah!', lower and deeper everytime. He was trying to say the Professor's name and trying to listen to the pleas beneath him: "You're too big, it's too much, it hurts, keep going, I can take it, you, I can take it, oh you, oh."

"That's good, isn't it," he was saying into Professor Sycamore's ear, "that's better, isn't it? That's so much better, isn't it. You feel so much better now, don't you. That's better. That's so much better." Except he wasn't saying that, he was moaning, he was wrapping his arms around Professor Sycamore, underneath him, under the small of his back so that his hips were raised, so he could go deeper. He pulled one arm free, slapped the face underneath him hard, was rewarded with another frightened whimper, another sob, another heavenly litany of pleas.

The noises were speeding up together now, an erotic symphony, bed and belt buckle and voices all melding. "Oh Lysandre, please don't, oh don't, it's so good, no more, no more, I can't take it, no more, oh, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me hard, make me come, fuck me hard, make me come, make me come!"

"Augustine," he was saying. "Augustine, you sweet thing, you're so sweet, ah, Augustine. You'll take it, you're good, take it now, take it, _take it_."

He arched his back and came deep inside him. He could taste blood and roses in his mouth. He came hard and he felt the body under him shudder as Professor Sycamore succumbed to his own orgasm.

He lay there a few seconds, waiting for the last spasms of pleasure to twist through him, then he pulled out. Professor Sycamore whimpered.

Lysandre swung himself off the bed. Through a gap in the curtains he could see the sky, and was surprised to notice stars – the cloud cover that had burdened the sky for weeks had started to clear. Behind him, on the bed, he head the belt buckle clink again, and then the heartbreaking sound of Professor Sycamore crying quietly.

He untied the belt from the bed and then unbound the wrists. He wrapped Professor Sycamore in the bedsheets and then picked him up. The sub-thoughts were whispering, _mine, mine, mine, mine_.

"Let's run a bath," he said, in a calm, magisterial voice. Professor Sycamore, through the tears, gave an incredulous laugh.

He took him down the private staircase to the tower turret's bathroom and, true to his word, ran a bath.

Professor Sycamore looked dazed and abused. His wrists were red and chafed and there were bruises forming on his thighs where Lysandre had gripped too roughly. His hair was a mess, his lips were slightly swollen, and on one of his cheeks there was a delicate pink rash forming where Lysandre had slapped him. He was shaking all over and moved very gingerly.

Lysandre thought, I shouldn't have been so rough with him, I will be more careful next time. Lysandre thought, _have you ever seen anything so beautiful in all your life? _and _mine, mine, mine!_

He unwound the bedsheets and lifted Professor Sycamore into the bathwater.

"If you have made this too hot, I'll howl the place down," Professor Sycamore warned. "I'm feeling quite sensitive, I'll have you know. Ow! Putain! What is this, are you trying to cook me?!"

"Lie back," Lysandre instructed. "I'm going to wash you."

Professor Sycamore gave him a bemused look. "My goodness. Do you have any of that no-tears shampoo? Only I've spent half of this evening crying and I'm running out of tears."

"Don't sass me after I've fucked you," said Lysandre, and Professor Sycamore blushed.

He lathered up some soap and started on those daintily formed shoulders (bitten, he saw, hickey-marked), moving down to the chest, under the arms ("I'm ticklish!"), the long lovely ribcage, the skin above his heart. He felt he could never stop being amazed by the sight of Augustine Sycamore naked.

When he reached under the water, between Professor Sycamore's legs, then further down, Professor Sycamore jumped and stopped him.

"Don't!"

"Why not?" asked Lysandre, his hands idly cupping one charmingly pert buttock.

"It's- it's embarrassing. Don't wash there."

"I've just stuck my cock in it. Either everything is embarrassing or nothing is." When Professor Sycamore wriggled and looked uncomfortable, he felt a great warmth filling him, a hopeless fondness. "Oh let me, Professor. You're so lovely. One last liberty."

"Fucking hell, stop calling me 'Professor'," muttered Professor Sycamore, but he relented and lay back. He winced, though, when Lysandre started to wash him there, and Lysandre thought, I'll be gentler next time, and _oh you, oh you, oh you._

He worked on the long legs too, with their graceful black hairs, between the toes – "Why are your toes so horrible and squished?" "Oh, my dazzling career as a prima ballerina, mon ami, it's a crying shame." He lifted one foot out of the bath and kissed its defenceless arch, thought his heart would snap in two when he saw the toes curl.

"Get in with me," said Professor Sycamore shyly. He obliged.

The bath was a very large, old-fashioned tub, with clawed feet that Lysandre had always thought were needlessly kitsch, but it provided enough room for movement. Professor Sycamore swished over to where he was and lay against him, back against his chest, dear tangled head under his chin. He put his arms around him and kissed the top of his head.

They lay together like that, another still embrace in the changing breaks of the long days. He shut his eyes and buried his face in Professor Sycamore's hair.

_I love you, Augustine Sycamore_, he thought. But he didn't say it. Not yet.

Professor Sycamore had been idly flicking at the surface of the water, watching the ripples form and run into each other until they joined and vanished. Now, suddenly, he laughed, and lifted a dripping arm out of the water to point at the window.

The cloud cover of the early autumn really had lifted, and outside was a dark chalkboard of sky, unwritten, clean, awaiting instruction.

"Look, Lysandre," said Augustine, "the sun's coming up."


End file.
